There is a huge amount of howling about the interview Meryl Streep – one of the two Hollywood actresses with any talent at all – gave at the Berlin Film Festival. I find, however, that Streep was uncommonly kind and gracious to people who seem incapable of conducting themselves with any degree of decency. Here is the part that I found absolutely shocking:
Asked by an Egyptian reporter whether she understood films from the Arab world and North Africa, Streep said while she didn’t know much about the region, “I’ve played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures.”
When some dime a dozen quack journalist dares to take this tone with a world-class super star, the star in question needs to be an extremely charitable person to continue the conversation. I would like to see this creep of a journalist ask a male celebrity if he understands some crap movie or other.
What’s especially obnoxious is that every feminist website in my blogroll is piling on Streep and not on this disrespectful, obnoxious jerkwad of a journalist. And then the same pseudo-feminists will whine how nobody takes them seriously in professional contexts, seeing zero connection between their readiness to support public putdowns of successful women and their own incapacity to be treated with respect in public spaces.
Clarissa's Blog 
I don’t agree that the journalist disrespected her based on this quote that you highlighted. Now, if she was the only member of that panel who was questioned and who made similar statements and got inane questions, that would be one thing. She answered that question with something equally inane.
Did she pick the other members of this panel?
I love Streep but this doesn’t rise to the level of Lèse majesté.
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I cannot imagine anybody addressing such a question to me. It doesn’t happen. And I’m not a celebrity.
It’s not normal or acceptable to speak to people like that. I do not allow this. If somebody spoke to me like this in a private context, I would drown them in extreme verbal abuse. If they spoke to me like this in public, I’d get up and leave immediately.
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You left out the part of the Streep quote that the feminists and lefty websites are really howling about.
When responding to a complaint that the officials at the Berlin Film Festival, which Streep heads, is entirely white, she replied, “[W]e’re all Africans now.”
That’s the money quote that has them screaming.
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All she said is that humankind comes from Africa. This is the very first thing one is taught at every African American Studies department. It’s hardly shocking. Why anybody not belonging to the KKK would be traumatized by the statement is a mystery. Yes, we all come from Africa, big whoop.
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Hey, I’m not disagreeing with Streep at ALL. I’m definitely an African-American-British-Cherokee whatever! 🙂
And it isn’t the white supremacists screaming about Streep’s words. It’s Shakesville and Salon.com.
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I think she’s smart and witty, so this response could’ve been in jest. And without a video it’s impossible to tell. But if her serious response to racial discrimination in her industry ‘we’re all africans’ that is just tone deaf and stupid.
An analogy to this would be ‘we’re all humans’ as a serious response to a question about gender discrimination in an industry.
Obviously, I agree with you about the reporter’s stupid question about her ability to understand movies from the arab world.
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Related news: George Clooney is in Berlin at the same festival as Streep, and he’s scheduled to meet with Angela Merkel tomorrow to help her resolve the European refugee crisis. (Guess that takes care of the problem.)
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