An Open Letter to Meryl Streep: You Live and Work in Make-Believe

Dear Ms. Streep,

You are a tremendous actress. While your choice of projects and my preference for movies don’t often align, when they do, I see your skill at your craft is obvious.

Unfortunately, you embarrassed the crap out of yourself and your profession Monday night with your speech on so many levels that it’s obvious you didn’t put the preparation into your acceptance as you do with your performances.

First, the idea that Donald Trump — a man I didn’t vote for, I might add — plans to deport your fellow actors who are immigrants is pathologically insane.

He’s claimed to want to deport illegals. Unless the Hollywood darlings are illegals, then they have nothing to worry about and never did.

Then you double down and make the bizarre claim that if Trump deported Hollywood, all that would be left for entertainment would be football and mixed martial arts.

I understand you’ve actually been invited to a Bellator MMA event. I urge you to go, and when you watch the fights, think about something. While actors often spend years learning their craft, they have nothing on the athletes you disparaged with your comments.

Fighters spend years honing their passion while enduring tremendous pain, and put a lot of wear and tear on their bodies just to land a gig with a promotion somewhere that pays them beans. The hope is to somehow land a spot in one of the large promotions like Bellator or the UFC.

They work full-time jobs and train in their free time, all so they might get a shot at being one of the few who makes some real money — which will still be less than most steadily working actors make. Further, there’s no union to make sure everyone gets big money. There’s no fighting for scale payment.

Further, let’s be realistic about Hollywood: Donald Trump could deport all of Hollywood, and the biggest impact would be on casting directors who would have to hold auditions with unknowns in order to find their leads. Make no mistake, there are multitudes clamoring for the chance to be the next you.

Further, there are plenty out there talented enough to do it. You are not an irreplaceable commodity. You’re one of the thousands, at the very least, with the talent to be entertaining as you pretend to do the things many of us actually have done.

Let’s be clear — that’s what acting essentially is, pretending. You rely on writers. You play pretend for money, and that’s all you do. Don’t pretend that because you play pretend better than most others in the world that you have anything insightful to say about anything in particular.

You take advantage of your free screen time to go along with the pretense that your voice on any subject matters more than another person’s. It doesn’t.

The election results should have taught you that, since the Hollywood crowd did all they could, and Donald Trump still won.

You delude yourself with thoughts of your importance. The rest of us are doing things that really matter, the life-and-death work of bringing quality of life and even prosperity to our families and this nation.