Lynn M. Hansen: Streep’s speech exactly what our nation needs to hear
W.H. Auden wrote in 1939: “All I have is a voice / To undo the folded lie.”
Meryl Streep, in your Golden Globe moment of achievement you recount one presidential campaign performance that struck hooks into your heart. In six minutes, you pull away his mask, reveal his darkness, use your stage to hold power to account – for lies, for mocking the disabled, for maligning the immigrant, for the bullying behavior modeled at the highest level of power in the nation – and call us into action to support the principled press.
During your career you have become an agent of empathy for characters you inhabit, helping us feel. Now you wear a target for his ridicule and spin born of the thin-skinned insecurity of a megalomaniac. You go girl. Speak truth to power, call out every outrage, let your broken heart lead us out of torpor into vigilance and action. Together our voices “will undo the folded lie.”
Lynn M. Hansen, Modesto
This story was originally published January 10, 2017 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Lynn M. Hansen: Streep’s speech exactly what our nation needs to hear."