Meryl Streep has hit on star-struck Trumps big weakness
Monday 9 January 2017 16.30 GMT
Calling the president-elect racist, sexist or a bully doesn’t hit home. But Streep, in her withering Golden Globes speech, found a way to get under his skin
Where innumerable others have failed over the past months, years, decades, Meryl Streep looks to have really struck a nerve with Donald Trump at the Golden Globe awards last night. Not by simply criticising the president-elect for the bullying, potentially violent culture he threatens to bring to American public life. Many have done that before, with equally accomplished thespian delivery, including Hugh Laurie earlier that evening (“I accept this award on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere”). Streep built on that sentiment in her acceptance speech for the Cecil B DeMille award, condemning Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter in a speech in 2015. But Streep’s masterstroke was to characterise Trump’s antics as performance.
“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.” She sounds like the most withering theatre critic ever. If that was a review and you had to work a quote out of it for a poster, the best you could do would be: “‘Effective’ – Meryl Streep.”
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Clearly Trump loves the idea of “being a star”, and not just for the sexual predation opportunities, but the stars don’t want him. They flocked around Clinton on the campaign trail – not that it made any difference (it seems the media underestimated the celebrity wattage of Scott Baio). It looks to be the same post-election: all the stories so far have been about celebrities who have turned down the invitation to appear at his inauguration. They don’t want him in their gang, and he doesn’t like it.
In 2007, Trump received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – confirmation, despite so much criticism, that he really is a star. “It was something that was given to me by some very powerful people in Hollywood and I’m very honoured by it,” he said at the time. But in recent months, Trump’s star has been repeatedly vandalised. It has had graffiti sprayed on it, including a Nazi swastika, people have taken selfies raising their middle fingers to it, spitting on it, urinating on it, or letting their dogs shit on it. In July last year, an artist built a miniature wall around Trump’s star, topped with razor wire and tiny border signs saying “Keep Out”. And last October, a man disguised as a construction worker took a sledgehammer to it. He had intended to remove it and auction it off to raise funds for the women who accused Trump of groping them. Ronald Reagan’s star never had to put up with this.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/09/meryl-streep-trump-big-weakness-golden-globes-speech
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and a master stroke. She never named him, she was not partisan, she did not attack his positions, she did not raise her voice (admittedly, she couldn't), and she did not set out to do any of those things. She psychologically diminished him in a way which could only be challenged with the equivalent of "I know you are but what am I." Yet, for all that, she eliminated him with a razor sharp scalpel while celebrating all he professes to oppose. Finally, her message was not to him ("I'm not talking to you!"
but to those who oppose him - "I've got your back and everyone in Hollywood should also have your back." Spectacular!
I never noticed that before.
The pout is ridiculous. The political cartoons with his lips jutting way out aren't too exaggerated!
His early life pics don't seem that way. Did his face finally get stuck, like some mothers warn their kids might happen someday if they keep a certain facial expression? 
Thanks for the laugh about practicing in front of a mirror! 
One has to ask: when did the evil happen? When did he go from this bright-eyed, smiling kid to the monster who ran GWB's insanely militaristic White House?
