What Meryl Streep did not say
Meryl Streep, in her much vaunted Golden Globes speech said , “take your broken heart, make it into art”.
Well, an Iraqi artist, Mahmoud Obaidi, has already done that.
Inspired by his war-broken heart, Obaidi used discarded American weapons and Humvee parts to create a life-size sculpture of an Iraqi family with missing limbs.
In referring to his work, Obaidi remarked: “It says this is what you did to us.”
When Meryl Streep delivered her speech, it was obvious that Obaidi and the victims of American militarism were far from her mind.
Yes, imitating a disabled person is a despicable act but if Meryl Streep was truly concerned about compassion, she should have talked about the devastation of war, extrajudicial killing, torture and drone strikes that murder and disable innocent civilians including women and children.
And if she was truly concerned about intolerance and xenophobia, she should have talked about the major role Hollywood has played in vilifying Muslims, portraying them as unreasonable and inherently violent.
In particular, she should have mentioned Obama, dubbed as “Deporter in Chief”, for deporting 2.5 million immigrants through immigration orders.
But she did not say any of that because, like the Obama brand, her speech was only meant to make us feel good.
Many years ago, my German friend and I attended a conference in Tunisia.
The Tunisian Minister of Education (I think that is who he was) opened the conference and delivered a short speech in Arabic.
Most of us couldn’t understand what he was saying but all of us clapped when the Arab-speaking delegates clapped- all of us except my German friend.
When I asked why he didn’t clap. He said they had been taught at school not to clap for things they did not understand.
German people have good reasons for worrying about great orators whose powerful words are designed to stir our emotions and shape our views.
Michelle and Barak Obama’s recent farewell speeches have proved, once again, what amazing, engaging, and well-trained orators the Obamas are.
They are able to move their audiences with their words and get them to even shed a tear or two.
No, I’m not comparing the Obamas with Hitler- not at all.
I am simply pointing out that oratory is an art form, and like most art, designed to be propagandist. That is not necessarily a bad thing because not all propaganda is bad.
But we have to be careful to measure a good speech by the right standards.
I measure a good speech by what I learn from it, and more importantly, by ways in which my views are challenged or even reversed.
It is okay for a speech to have a strong emotional impact, but if that is all it delivers, then it is not a good speech.
The Obamas’ words are always very pretty- if they were a painting, they would probably be Monet’s Water Lilies: serene and uplifting.
But if the Obamas really cared about their brand of “hope and change”, they would ask people to stop their clapping and cheering and start treating everything they hear and read with a great deal of skepticism. Surely, that must be the most urgent message for Americans right now.
In fact, the best resolution for Americans would be to have a very hard internal debate with themselves.
That is what all of us should be doing- constantly arguing against ourselves in search of the truth. Internet makes this easy.
Socrates encouraged us to do this too: to examine our impressionistic views and test them against evidence.
Interestingly, Socrates was not a fan of democracy. He believed only the citizens who had bothered to debate the important issues should be allowed to vote (imagine what a different world we would be living in now if Socrates’ vision was realized).
I wonder, for instance, how many of Michelle and Barak Obama’s devotees have ever Googled “why Obama was a bad president?”
If they did, they would have found out that, in the last year of his presidency alone, America dropped 26,171 bombs on other countries; and that, under his presidency, innocent Muslims were tortured and civilians killed during drone strikes.
They would have also found out that, their supposedly pro-environment president, through the US Export-Import bank, gave more money to overseas dirty fuel companies that any other president.
And when ordinary Americans protested against police killing black youths and Israel’s brutalities in Palestine, Obama responded by talking about the difficult plight of police officers and giving an additional $225m of financial support to the Israeli army.
It was Obama who decided to bail out Wall Street without sending a single top executive to jail and, it was through his education policies, that hundreds of public schools were closed for charter ones.
And let’s not forget the demonization of truth tellers like Edward Snowden, the 2.5 million immigrants he deported, and the fact that his backing of a corrupt candidate, Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders, was instrumental in the triumph of Donald Trump.
If we are to reverse the rise of Trumpism, we have to do less cheerleading for empty words and focus more on holding those in power accountable for their actions.
A noble peace prize winner drops 26k bombs in his final term in office. That’s fucking disgusting. Is this our price of piece?
Slipping in the German reference undermines your argument, and is desperate, why even mention…
Because it’s the same developmental path made famous by Hittler, in the modern context. Step one, present a blank slate, start with hope/change/dream, which are similar but not the same as hitters slogans of hope/change/dream. Step two, write anything you want in between. Nobody would have though that vision included 10000 dead American soldiers and embassy staff. Or 6 million dead Jews.
Petty humans are conditioned to think in small bites of information, only at the state level could these atrocities have been conjured
You might have a point Matty but I wanted to emphasise the dangers of thoughtless cheerleading and how those who fail to hold power to account also bear some responsibility for the result of their hero’s actions.
Yeah, its definitely not German to the issue.
Matty, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Don’t forget your history, mate.
Well it is hardly surprising that Streep would give a speech that drips with double standards, remember she is the same Streep that helped rehabilitate Thatchers image.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/apr/09/meryl-streep-margaret-thatcher-figure-awe
Iv always wondered why that Hollywood hack keeps getting awarded, as it turns out, if she did hold differing opinions, she wouldn’t have stood on all those podiums.
You are right Adrian. It is not surprising that Meryl Streep should give such a speech. What is surprising though (and that’s the point I’m making) is how that speech was held up to be an important and brave speech.
She’s an actress. She pretends to be what she’s not. She reads the script and delivers the lines. She aint no intellectual.
Here’s another actress, Susan Sarandon, sounding pretty intellectual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LoGej6BqMc
What a great post. I particularly liked
“When I asked why he didn’t clap. He said they had been taught at school not to clap for things they did not understand.”
I also agree with critiquing politicians ‘great speeches’. I don’t care about speeches I care more about actions and Obama and many other politicians are falling short on the right actions possibly because they did not learn what your German friend learned about not clapping for things they don’t understand.
In NZ, TPPA comes to mind as does mass surveillance and sending troops to Iraq. If politicians don’t understand it they should not be authorising and championing those issues.
Thank you SAVENZ. Yes, I do believe that the main issue remains educating people but our mainstream media, whose responsibility it is to inform us, are hamstrung by the need to return profit to their shareholders. The system is designed to keep us distracted and uninformed.
Yeah and who’s mess did Obama spend most of the time cleaning up after? GW Bush, the guy that opened up the whole can of worms in the middle east over a lie, a lie that Trump agreed with.
It was Henry Kissass who opened up this can of worms, he makes Dick Chainy look like Martyn Bradbury, no offence Martyn. But when you decide to start your history from a the wrong point in time, you end up with the wrong conclusions.
Donna is correct in this situation when she finished with. “If we are to reverse the rise of Trumpism, we have to do less cheerleading for empty words and focus more on holding those in power accountable for their actions.”
Concerned people are not bothered with what happened in 2008/2002/2001/minus a million BC. They want to know that a police state isn’t going to kick in there door because of a tweet. Or if a police state is going to kick in there door because it’s in the national interest. By national interest I mean corporate interests. If corporate interest cleaning up the mess they caused is a justifiable position. Then Hillary (Bernie should have won) would have won and not Trump.
So until it can be proven that Chainys policies killed more than Kissengers, then I’ll agree with you that Trump bought into lies about WMDs.
Invading Iraq was the thing that caused most of the problems that they are dealing with now, if that hadn’t happened, most of what’s going on now wouldn’t be happening. It opened up the massive power vacuum that IS and Al Qaeda filled, trying to pin the regions problems on Obama is a joke. Before he came in Iraq was still a total basket case.
When Obama took office, the USA was bombing 4 countries, when Obama leaves Office 8 years later, the USA is bombing 7 countries.
Let’s make a quick tally
Wars ended = 0
New wars started = 3
Tell us again why we should be blaming Bush after 8 years of Obama’s warmongering…
At the time, Trump agreed with the invasion of Iraq.
Now he says he didn’t.
He re-writes history better than Winston Smith in “1984”.
Thank you Donna Miles for being a truly perceptive and intelligent female. I had almost given up on females in spite of being one myself.