Hollywood was caught in the act of being itself last night: arrogant, ignorant, mentally ill, and disdainful of the American public that elected Donald Trump our next president of the United States.  The occasion for this hatefest was a supposedly gala event, the Golden Globe Awards, in which the relatively few members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (many of them stringers for impecunious overseas media outlets) vote on awards that are considered precursors of the Academy Awards.  The HFPA makes a lot of money off the broadcast, and rumors that individual members sell their votes are so common that last year’s host, Ricky Gervais, openly joked about it.

This year’s host, Jimmy Fallon, lacked the wit to gracefully handle a teleprompter breakdown:

This is a great way to start the show. I can do impressions. What do we do here? I can think of something. Cut to Justin Timberlake, please. Just wink at me or something, yeah. This is great. We have another monitor coming in. You know what, I'll make up this monologue. We're here, this is what happens at the Golden Globes already. Already you have your Golden Globes moment. Already. It's like a gift. I'm happy I didn't trip."

But it was Meryl Streep whose six-minute rant – on the occasion of her “lifetime achievement award” (isn’t that reserved for has-beens?) – took the trophy for derangement.  I will embed the video below, but I warn readers that the tone of voice she used suggests genuine pain, and disdain.  Of course, Ms. Streep is a superb actress, so it is difficult to know if the performance was sincere or merely a scripted presentation calculated to produce an audience reaction.  My bet is that the former is the case: that she actually is uncontrollably in despair over the failure of the public to appreciate her warnings against Trump and actually is quite angry at them.

In the course of her rant, she actually admitted to mental illness.  Keep in mind that this was not some fictional character admitting mental illness; it is a real person speaking before a vast audience.

Here is the transcript of her rant via Grabien, with emphasis added and my comments inserted:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read.

This is a confession of mental derangement, normally a disqualification for an honored role addressing the American public.  Perhaps Ms. Streep is exaggerating for effect in front of an audience.  But she would grant no such leeway in understanding the words of the man she attacks.

Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.

Self-pity is not an audience-builder, Ms. Streep.  Coming in the midst of an event full of people wearing clothing costing thousands of dollars, drinking fancy wine, and eating fancy food, it is downright repulsive.

Ms. Streep is intelligent enough to know that Donald Trump does not vilify foreigners.  Quite the contrary – he has married two of them.  He does not want people to come here illegally, but the left dishonestly conflates illegals with the honorable people who follow our laws and come here with the blessing of the law. 

But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, grew up in central falls, Long Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? [ Applause ] And the beautiful Ruth negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in tasmania. Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. [ Cheers and applause ]

Are any of these “foreigners” here illegally?  I seriously doubt it, if only because their huge paychecks draw the scrutiny of the IRS.

But then again, Streep has already confessed to mental illness, so maybe she just thinks her lies are the truth.

They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like.

Gee, I thought their job was to entertain us.

And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work. There was one performance this year that stunned me. 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. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

You mean like rich Hollywood people using their fame to rant against others?

Okay. Go on with that thing. This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. [ Cheers and applause ]

I suspect that “principled” means leftist, not honest.  Honesty is not respected during her speech, so why respect it in the media?

That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood foreign press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth. One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor. Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy.

Empathy does not extend to the Carrier workers who were laid off, only to be kept in their jobs thanks to Donald Trump.  Empathy does not extend to the family of Kate Steinle, murdered by a sanctuary city policy.

We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. [ Applause ] As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you."

Ms. Streep’s future films will get along without my attendance, and that of about half the country.