TRENTON — Video of Meryl Streep’s speech poking fun at President Donald Trump on Saturday has surfaced, and it includes a poignant memory of her New Jersey roots that shaped her opposition to the president’s agenda.
On Sunday, Streep made headlines by saying her January criticism of Trump’s divisive approach to immigration policy had set her up for attacks by “brownshirts,” the colloquial name for Nazi militiamen who helped bring Hitler to power.
But while speaking at a New York awards dinner where the Summit, N.J. native was being honored by the LGBTQ rights organization Human Rights Campaign, she also disclosed something from her own Garden State childhood that motivated her to speak out in defense of trans and immigrant rights.
“When I was a little girl growing up in middle class New Jersey, my entire artistic life was curated by people who were in the straight-jacket of very conformist suburban life,” recalled Streep. “Being different was like, drawing a target on your forehead. And you had to have a special kind of courage to do it.”
She singled out her sixth grade music teacher, Paul Grossman, for special praise, noting that he would go on to become “one of the first transgender women in the country.”
After sex reassignment surgery, the now-Paula Grossman reported back to “our middle school, in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where she’d taught for 30 years, and was promptly fired.”
Grossman pursued her case for wrongful dismissal for seven years, recounted Streep, only to have it rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“But, she won her pension under a disability allowance, although she was disabled only by the small minds of the school board,” recounted Streep. “She was a terrific teacher, and she never taught again.”
Streep then recalled a class field trip to the Statute of Liberty that Grossman chaperoned her and her classmates to in 1961.
Standing at the base of the statue, they sang a song based on the poem of the famous Emma Lazarus inscription at its base: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free…’
Streep then broke into that same song.
“I can’t remember what I did Tuesday, but I remember that song,” she said, to wild cheers. “It stirred my 11 year old heart then, and it animates my conscience today.”
In her speech, she poked fun at Trump, and also Vice President Mike Pence.
“I’m also fairly proud a charming portrayal of a gay conversion therapist on Lisa Kudrow’s ‘Web Therapy’ blog,” said Streep, referencing her 2010 appearance on Showtime’s now-cancelled comedy about a therapist who works with patients over the Internet.
“Our vice president might want to check out those episodes,” said Streep, to great laughter from the crowd.
Meryl Streep: I am under attack by Trump ‘brownshirts’
While running for Congress in 2000, Pence argued that federal resources for AIDS relief “should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”
Although Pence didn’t say so outright, that position has been widely interpreted as signaling his support for “gay conversion” therapy, which seeks to “cure” patients of being attracted to members of the same sex.
In “Web Therapy,” Streep, played a mid-Western “aversion therapist,” who tells Kudrow’s character that she has continued to use it on one of her patients anyway, though without much success.
“He’d rather look at a picture of David Hasselhoff while receiving the maximum dose of the voltage we’re currently allowed to administer under the law,” complains the character played by Streep.
You can watch Streep’s whole speech above, and Streep’s 2010 appearance on Lisa Kudrow’s “Web Therapy” below.
Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
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