Meryl Streep learned a painful lesson about falling out of favor with her liberal admirers in Hollywood last year: the left eats its own.

She paid dearly for playing the dumb card when confronted about her silence on routinely collaborating with the worst serial sexual predator among the titans in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein.  "One thing can be clarified," Ms. Streep assured her fellow thespians who were launching the "#MeToo" campaign calling out sexual predators on social media.  "Not everyone knew," she asserts.  "I did not know about his having meetings in his hotel room, his bathroom, or other inappropriate coercive acts." 

Living in a bubble does have its disadvantages for the three-time Oscar-winner.  Ms. Streep's sanitary use of the words "inappropriate coercive acts" falls hopelessly short of touching on the outrage experienced by the legions of women who suffered blatant sexual assault or violent rape by the now world-famous serial abuser.

Unfortunately, Streep kept going off script, digging herself into a deeper hole as she attempted to explain herself to her colleagues.  She referred to the dozens of sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein as an "example of disrespect" to her fellow actors during a women's conference in Boston.  "No Meryl, it's a [f------] crime," wrote Rose McGowan, the actress who heads the "#MeToo" campaign on social media.  "You are such a lie," McGowan added, referencing the elder thespian's claim of ignorance of Weinstein's 30-year sexual rampage stretching across several states in the U.S., encompassing at least two countries in Europe, and impacting the lives of dozens of victims and possibly hundreds of bystanders.

The full weight of the liberal left came down to bear on Streep at the end of 2017.  Humiliation is a major form of protest in the progressive community, oftentimes mercilessly targeting victims deemed un-P.C.  In this case, Streep wasn't mocked with a "pussy hat" campaign, but her likeness appeared on hundreds of posters with two words symbolically covering up her eyesight, "She Knew," which were posted throughout the Los Angeles area (i.e., the center of Tinseltown).  Repackaging the truth in attacking President Trump never hurt Streep's professional standing, but now she's being held accountable for her words by liberals who are diverting from the same groupthink narrative.

Regrettably, Streep's worse misstep was yet to come.  "If everybody knew," she asserts, "I don't believe that all the investigative reporters ... would have neglected for decades to write about it."  More than one reporter has gone on record alleging that the story of Weinstein's obscene behavior was wrongly spiked for political reasons by management at media outlets.  (Harvey is a powerful person with more connections in high places than the average serial predator.)

There is another simple explanation – one that may be closer to Streep than she is willing to admit.

This would involve an army of enablers who have allowed the "casting couch" culture to thrive in Hollywood for generations, including agents sending their young clients on casting calls and ignoring previous complaints of Weinstein's alleged assaults, attorneys at Miramax (Weinstein's company) factoring financial penalties into the producer's contract for anticipated sexual violations, assistants experiencing an attack of conscience for allowing themselves to be used to escort young victims into Weinstein's plush hotel suites, make-up artists and designers feeling personal revulsion at hearing the scuttlebutt but looking the other way to retain their jobs, and parents not wishing to jeopardize their children's careers by turning to the authorities.  Tragically, the list goes on ad nauseam.

We all get the picture – except for Meryl Streep, who hides behind a wall of plausible deniability even as that barricade has come crashing down all around her.