'You're heartbroken because you failed': Randy Quaid writes furious open letter to Meryl Streep

Actor Randy Quaid – who, while not being the male Meryl Streep, has indeed been nominated for pretty much every award there is – had some serious things to say about Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes about Donald Trump.

Streep laid into the president-elect without ever mentioning him by name and all while doing it in the scratchy voice of a young Lindsay Lohan, mocking his tendency for paranoia and conspiracy as well as his allegations of bullying against disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.

Donald shot back with an expectedly petty response, but who cares about that because now Big Randy Quaid has something to say, in a TwitLonger open letter no less:

“You stated in your speech that “when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” So true,” says the Independence Day and Kingpin actor who was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award and an Academy Award for his role in Jack Nicholson’s The Last Detail. “So why not attack the bullies that run the entertainment news conglomerates? Why not speak in support of their victims? You’ve got bullying galore going on right in front of you, but either you’re pointedly ignoring it or you just don’t have a clue...”

He hit out at the actress’ positioning as voice of the voiceless stating that she was nowhere to be seen when he needed help, amid claims other claims he said he:

• had his home stolen by a Warner Bros executive
• was falsely arrested to cover up for another executive's crime
• had lucrative contracts cancelled over media lies in the news attributed to “anonymous sources”
• had his passport illegally revoked by Hillary Clinton's state department because the corrupt judicial system took payoffs from Time Warner
• was cast as a lead in a musical - then was falsely accused of character traits that actually belonged to the role he was playing
• woke up one day to read a fake news blog that accused his wife of groping 32 men on a film set

“When all of these things happened to me, no one in Hollywood, including you, came to my side,” wrote the actor. “Forty years in the business, and not one brave soul stepped forward to put in a good word affirming my professionalism and character.”

It all smacks of WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT MY PAIN? of a man butting into a woman’s airtime but Quaid raises an interesting point before losing his way with some shameless shit-talking and light Trump-siding:

“Ironically, I suspect that you would agree with Trump when he calls you an “overrated” actress. In your heart of hearts, as good as you are, you have to know there’s truth to what he says. There is always truth to what he says.” 

He’s not the only person to be critical of the actress, Daily Show presenter and comedian Trevor Noah called Streep’s comments “tone deaf” especially this section of her speech where she said “if you kick [foreigners and outsiders] out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts”. 

“I understand what Meryl Streep was trying to do,” said Noah, “and I don’t know if I could’ve done better in that moment, but here’s the thing I feel like we could all learn as people: You don’t have to make your point by shitting on someone else’s thing, because a lot of people love football and the arts.” He did add praise to the majority of the speech, however, claiming it was “a speech about respect, it was a speech about empathy, and most importantly, it was a speech about responsibility.”

Author Kerry Howley, who wrote the critically acclaimed semi-fictional book Thrown – widely regarded as one of the best books ever written about MMA – said to the Atlantic, “Whatever part of [fans] is interested in MMA is not the part of them that celebrates white supremacy… The fighters that I know self-identify as artists. They’re people who are seeking out a life that is very likely not going to make them wealthy, that is very difficult, and that is openly stigmatized, as we just saw. And they’re doing it because there’s something beautiful and strange about the experience of opening yourself up to this kind of violence. It was very easy for me to spend three years with these men because they shared a lot of the values of the artist community.”

More than just bullying and pretentiousness, others had some things to say about far more serious hypocrisies on Streep’s account, particularly her standing ovation of director and sex offender Roman Polanski’s win at the 2003 Academy Awards.

But then – as a counterweight – we offer this: