Meryl Streep takes the Fox News defense against Rose McGowan attack

Meryl Streep takes the Fox News defense against Rose McGowan texting attack, which accused her of knowing about the actions, motives or intensions of Harvey Weinstein and how he treated Hollywood actresses.

McGowan criticized Streep, among others, for planning to wear black the Golden Globes awards, which is held in January:

“YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”
In an effort to defend herself, Streep listed Fox News conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News. O'Reilly is hated by liberals, who generally dismiss Fox News as inauthentic journalism or too favorable to President Trump.

But isn't this just the liberal sympathy defense? List some conservatives, people who other liberal Hollywood elites hate, just prove that she is one of them, more than willing to defend the liberal Hollywood ideals against conservatives? But by this attempt to deflect attention, it would seem to prove McGowan's assertions.

Why would Streep, a bright woman, be able to recall these Fox News people, to the exclusion of people like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and others, who work at other networks that are considered more liberal? Why the focus on Fox News?

[Who are the liberals who have been accused of the same or worse?
Matt Lauer, NBC Today Show, Sen. Al Franken, Rep. John Conyers, Mark Halperin, NBC and MSNBC, and Glen Thrush, New York Times. Thrush was an active Trump-hater, a texter of half truths about the Trump administration.]

It’s because it’s assumed that by siding with liberals, those who run movie studios, in attacking Fox News, she will be forgiven for overlooking any woman who got in the way of the movie system that is dominated by men.

Streep is a survivor. She is the last woman on the island. She is the victor, a woman who has probably braved nearly anything that has been thrown her way. (It's been rumored that Dustin Hoffman, to prepare her for her role as the woman who wanted a divorce, slapped her in the face.)

So this is her way of saying that she feels for McGowan. She feels for her weakness. She feels for the fact that she is not as strong as Streep is. That’s what she is saying.
It’s a long text.

“Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines,” Streep wrote. “I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers.”

Streep says she was not “deliberately silent. I didn’t know.” But how is this possible? To say this is like saying I am not a star. I don’t know how the Hollywood game is played. She knows how it is played. She is tough. She is probably one of the toughest female actor or actress in Hollywood.

If walls could talk, oh the stories they would tell of run-ins Streep has probably had with agents, directors, actors. Is she saying that no Hollywood agent has ever attempted to take advantage of her? Does Streep live in a lily white pristine world where she knows of nothing of people like Weinstein? Not likely.

 “I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.”
While she may have had direct knowledge of the particular episodes with Harvey Weinstein, she did know all about Harvey. She knew what he was like. She probably heard stories and knew about all the male Hollywood producers and how lecherous each of them were, their proclivities, whether or not they could be trusted alone in a hotel room.

Again, while she may not have known about specific instances, she knew about - or heard about Weinstein.

“But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us. We did not know that womens' silence was purchased by him and his enablers.”
But that’s not really the point. Every actor or actress is not Meryl Streep. It’s not you, Meryl. The fact is that lots of them or probably the majority, knew what Weinstein was like. To pretend otherwise is to feign ignorance.

Meryl Streep, for decades, has been one of the most powerful female actors. If Streep had said something about Weinstein when he was in the throws of his attacks on women, it would have stopped him dead in his tracks. He would have had to give up his producing.

But what Weinstein did is probably not unusual. As casting directors go, it’s common of see how far a woman will go, or what she will do to be placed in the role in a movie.

To say something about this, Streep would have had to upset the entire Hollywood system. And that’s not something she wanted to do. Why would she? She has paid her dues. She has the Oscar.

“Rose and the scores of other victims of these powerful, moneyed, ruthless men face an adversary for whom Winning, at any and all costs, is the only acceptable outcome. That’s why a legal defense fund for victims is currently being assembled to which hundreds of good hearted people in our business will contribute, to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within.”

“No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living.. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this.”
Entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes and Weinstein. What about Charlie Rose? What about Matt Lauer? What about Al Franken? What about liberal monsters?

“I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.”

The bad old days? When were the bad old days for Charlie Rose? When were the bad old days for Matt Lauer? For Al Franken. They were not too long ago. Yes, Streep is a survivor. It’s not likely that Streep will convene any meeting for the purposes of disinfecting or integrating Hollywood any time soon.

But if Streep had said something about people like Weinstein, the world might have changed. People like Weinstein might not have felt to entitled to do whatever they wanted with women. Unfortunately for McGowan and others like her, we’ll never know how things might have been.

But undoing the damage done by someone like Weinstein will not be easy. He was quite popular with Democrats and liberals alike, partly because he donated heavily to liberal causes like the Clinton Foundation.

© 2017 Larry Ingram

​Actual text of Streep as submitted to CNN: