Tuesday, January 10, 2017

BENEATH CONTEMPT

On Sunday night during her passionate and compelling speech to the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep condemned the President-elect without naming him for his despicable and indefensibly grotesque physical assault on a disabled reporter who had offended him by... reporting on just one of Trump's... "inconsistencies." Here is what Ms. Streep in accepting the Globes' Lifetime Achievement Award, said:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me,” she said. “It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. . . . There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. And I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life."
Nothing that Meryl Streep said was factually incorrect...nothing...and her expressed opinion was hers. Not unexpectedly, President-Elect Trump as is his wont attacked Ms. Streep, adding her to the list of those condemned by his ranting Tweets; this one included that Meryl Streep, the most celebrated actress in the world today is "over-rated." (!!) That might have been the end of it, but it wasn't...

I can understand that Trump's hired flack, the Baghdad Bob of Trumpworld, Kellyanne Conway, denigrated Streep and her remarks; the mistress misdirection, she's paid to twist the facts. But I remain mystified as to why others situated in the Trump Amen Corner found this speech and its focus to be a matter of their concern, requiring them to adopt the Kellyanne approach. For example, Dennis Prager, who used to be a unifying force within the Jewish polity, chose to explain away, I guess one would call it, Trump's grotesque aping of the reporter, because he often made the same, or similar, gestures -- ignoring, of course, the context in which Trump did so in the matter at issue made his obscene intent perfectly clear -- and then condemned Streep for actions of hers, totally irrelevant to her speech and Trump's infantile display. A friend sent to his mailing list a video diatribe from a twosome calling themselves "Diamond and Silk" who condemned Streep's speech while acknowledging they hadn't seen it -- my friend characterized this as the "perfect response" to Meryl Streep!! Others, who apparently feel that any criticism of Mr. Trump is out of bounds and unacceptable, you know, like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, have spewed out similar garbage. Sadly, terribly sadly, these people feel it necessary to defend the indefensible.

As these critics and others have demonstrated over the past 8 years, to them and their ilk any and all criticism of President Obama was perfectly acceptable, no matter how ugly. In fact,  in certain instances, beyond ugly. Recently, upon the terrorist attack killing young soldiers on the streets of Jerusalem, some sent out a vicious pictorial, even before these beautiful young martyrs were laid to rest, accusing Obama and Kerry of having Israeli "blood on their hands." Yet, Meryl Streep's reasoned response to Donald Trump's unsparing mockery of a reporter with a disability draws these same people's unreasoned scorn.

Shame on them; shame on the President-elect.

Rwexler

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

When was Prager last a unifying force for Jews? 1985? He used to do good work with Joseph Telushkin, but he has been a predictable conservative talk radio staple for countless decades.

paul jeser said...

Richard - there are so many wrong things in this posting, but, it is your blog and you have the right to be so wrong.

HOWEVER, why did you not mention Streep's standing ovation for that pedophile Roman Polanski. She is a typical Hollywood hypocrite who lives in a multi-million dollar bubble without any connection to reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNrsV_o0KYo

AND YES, BHO, Kerry and JStreeters (among others) all have the blood of those killed in Jerusalem this week on their hands.

Anonymous said...

And shame on you for showing your true Chicago colors, a complete stalwart for the man who tried to do more to damage Israel and endanger Jewish lives than any President since the anti-Semite Jimmy Carter!

Maybe the aping of a disabled person was in very poor taste, but neither you nor the rest of your liberal elite want to move on.

Unlike those of us that allowed a man that claimed to have sat in the Rev Wright's church for 20 years while imbibing "kill whitey" and "kill the Jews" messages to govern peacefully, the liberal left (which is increasingly anti-Israel) will have none of a peaceful Democratic transition. A better question is where were all you Chicago Jews protesting in front of the Rev Wright?

And where is your condemnation of Ms. Streep's inability to name Israel when mentioning Natalie Portman.

Typical liberal

Why don't you go back to your vitriolic attacks on Jerry, since Lashon Harah is also a stock in trade

Anonymous said...

From Today's Israeli Press on Obama's Israel Channel 2 Interview on Uvda:

The world will remember Obama as one of the worst presidents in history; as a president with many good intentions that led to more than a few terrible consequences. He will be remembered as the president who legitimized the Iranian revolution (another result of the perilous nuclear deal) carried out by its Islamofascist regime, instead of helping the Iranian people during the Green Movement uprising in 2009, and who helped turn Iran into a regional power by putting his signature on that deal. He will be remembered as the president who coined the surreal term "leading from behind" during the war in Libya, and as the president who made the Palestinians believe that their desire for control, even over the Western Wall, has a strong leg to stand on.

The interview's bright spot was Obama's expression of broad American support for Israel. In his words, it doesn't matter what Israel decides regarding the settlement enterprise and other diplomatic issues -- the Americans, Democrats and Republicans, will always support Israel. It's good food for thought for those who promised us, morning and night, that we lost America. Obama is convinced he was our friend, just as he's sure his Cairo speech shouldn't be changed, despite reality's response to it with blood and fire. Sic transit gloria mundi, the ancient ones would say. Thus passes the glory of the world.

RWEX said...

On the same day on which Mssrs. Sandler and Silverman published a Statement against hate speech, this Post unleashed a torrent of it. What follows is a sampling of angry Comments among the tens of them that I have now rejected.

Anonymous said...

Richard, this sampling of Comments just validates what you've written. They are all of a piece and are, your words, "beneath contempt."