I didn’t watch the Golden Globes last night. I had zero desire to watch. Call me crazy, call me wacky, but there’s just something about a bunch of self-inflated egotists pompously congratulating themselves as they lust after golden statues that rubs me the wrong way.
So, admittedly, this article comes with a bit of an asterisk – I’ve only seen written pieces and video clips of the Golden Calves after the fact. But there was one clip in particular that caused my eyes to roll so far back into my head I’m still typing blind as I await their return.
It happened during Oprah Winfrey’s speech, which is the talk of the town today. So much so that many in media and Hollywood think they’ve found their candidate to rival Trump in 2020 – yes, a billionaire TV star with no political experience is who they want now. Sound familiar? The speech itself was fine, minus the press freedom dig at Trump – as if President Obama didn’t just spend the past eight years harassing and prosecuting and spying on whistleblowers and journalists.
It was the camera shots of the audience during the speech that caught my eye. One moment in particular struck me as incredibly ironic, and that was when they scanned the crowd to find Meryl Streep. Here’s a screenshot of her nodding in approval as Oprah spoke about the courage of women stepping forward to reveal their abuse at the hands of the Hollywood elite:
Somehow, Streep has catapulted herself to the top of the “Time’s Up” leaderboard, even though she still (to my knowledge) has not apologized for her support of convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. She and her colleagues famously applauded him back in 2003:
And it’s quite stunning to see who was caught on camera in the audience, vigorously cheering alongside Streep and others for a convicted pedophile. You guessed it – Harvey Weinstein:
Just because they happen to be correct on the issue doesn’t mean we should be compelled to celebrate the messenger. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true in this case – at least some of the messengers need to be called out.
Now, as a Christian, I am all about pivot points. Everyone makes mistakes, but owning those mistakes and repenting of them is paramount to walking the Christian walk. This has been one of my critiques of President Trump and his frequent cozying up to Christians given his morally questionable past behavior. If President Trump simply expressed remorse, admitted that what he’d done in the past was wrong, and explained that’s why he needs Jesus, there’d be a lot less to talk/complain about.
If Streep or Trump or anyone for that matter can point to the wrong they’ve done in their life and say ‘hey, wow, I messed up and I’m sorry. I don’t support my previous behavior or decisions. I believe differently now and here’s why.’ I’d be okay with that kind of tone and rhetoric, but unfortunately that’s not what we see coming out of Hollywood.
Instead we’re bombarded with brash arrogance, as if they are the first people to ever stand up for women and fight against sexual assault. The rest of the world already condemns this sort of behavior and finds it deplorable. So congratulations, I guess?
Of course there are good guys in Hollywood fighting the good fight. But we’re constantly lectured to by the likes of Matt Damon and Streep and Whoopi Goldberg – yet they’re the very same people who have enabled predatory behavior in the past – and in some instances, still do!
Unless I’ve missed it – and please, someone send me the update if she has done so – but has Meryl Streep publicly apologized for supporting Roman Polanski? This is a guy who once told a 16-year-old-girl “If you’re not a big enough girl to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen test.”
That’s not just tacit support of a questionable character, it’s support of a monster. The poster child of abuse in Hollywood.
Whoopi Goldberg, host of The View, once argued that what Polanski did wasn’t “rape-rape.”
As Maureen Callahan writes in the New York Post:
84-year-old Polanski and his supporters have successfully depicted his 1977 attack on 13-year-old Samantha Geimer — to which he pled guilty — as a one-off, an aberration. Polanski, who has lived lavishly in Europe for decades after fleeing the US criminal court system, is the real victim here, they say: He lost his mother in the Holocaust. He lost wife Sharon Tate and their unborn child in the savage Manson murders. He was forced to flee the States because the judge reneged on his plea deal and he’d already spent 42 days in jail. Not fair!
“Clearly, very clearly — and he’s proven this — Roman Polanski is not a predator,” Johnny Depp said in 2010. Five years prior, Mia Farrow, ostensibly all-too-familiar with accused child predators, testified on Polanski’s behalf in a libel suit. According to biographer Robert Weide, Farrow submitted a statement after Polanski’s arrest for raping Geimer describing him as “a loyal friend, important to me, a distinguished director, important to the motion picture industry, and a brave and brilliant man, important to all people.”
You’d think Roman Polanski split the atom.
The details of his rape case are extremely disturbing. You can read about them HERE, as Faithwire reported:
Polanski, who was 43 at the time, got the 13-year-old victim drunk on champagne and also drugged her, as if she wasn’t vulnerable enough already. After drugging her, Polanski then proceed to sexually assault Geimer despite her being scared and begging him to “keep away” from her.
Instead of taking her home, like the terrified teen asked many times, Polanski raped her. According to the Daily Mail:
Instead, a few minutes later, Geimer said, Polanski began having intercourse with her, while asking her if she was on the pill and when her last period was.
At one point, Geimer said, there was a knock on the door. The Los Angeles Times reported that the woman was actress Anjelica Huston, Nicholson’s girlfriend at the time, but Geimer testified that she did not know who the woman was who was in the house.
According to Geimer, the woman who knocked on the door said, “Roman, are you in there?”
Polanski went to the door and opened it a crack to speak to the woman. Meanwhile, Geimer testified, she put her underwear back on and started toward the door.
When asked why she didn’t say anything to the woman, Geimer said, “I was still pretty much afraid of him [Polanski].” She added that he was her only way home.
Geimer testified that Polanski closed the door before she could reach it, took off her panties and began intercourse again. When he finally let up, she said, she went to the bathroom and put on her dress again.
How in the world can the very same people – namely Streep and whoever else stood and cheered alongside her – now claim the moral high ground when it comes to #MeToo? Why should we listen to them?
If there was a pivot point, a moment of revelation and remorse, I would be more apt to take them seriously. While there are likely many well meaning, honorable individuals joining this movement, many seem to simply be grandstanding and have had no real meaningful change of heart.
Until people like Streep are willing to repent, less people will be willing to listen.