There was barely a mention of President Trump during the Golden Globes

Authored by washingtonpost.com and submitted by StevenSanders90210
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Women led the way at the 2018 Golden Globes, from leading the conversation on sexual harassment to owning being the heroines of the winning films and TV shows. Here are the highlights from the award show. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post)

The big story out of last year’s Golden Globes was the feud that started between Meryl Streep and then-President-elect Donald Trump. While accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Streep expressed her disgust at the way the future president mocked a disabled reporter. Trump responded early the next morning — on Twitter, naturally — that she was overrated. But she was hardly the only one to call him out last year; just about every celebrity seemed to be in a frenzy over the man about to take over as commander in chief.

What a difference a year makes. There was barely a mention of Trump on Sunday night.

That’s because, at the moment, the industry has other things to worry about — specifically the sexual harassment and abuses of power that have been going on far too long behind the scenes of movies and television. The allegations against super-producer Harvey Weinstein opened the floodgates and turned Hollywood introspective. As host Seth Meyers said during a People interview leading up to the awards show, “It seems like this year more than ever, Hollywood has its own internal politics that obviously deserve to be talked about.” And those politics were more important than whatever was happening in Washington.

Seth Meyers hosted the 2018 Golden Globes and quickly took aim at sexual harassment during his opening monologue. (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)

That’s not to say that Trump was completely ignored. Meyers, who’s known to be critical of the president on his late-night show, got in a few digs. At one point, he pointed to Seth Rogen and said, “Remember when he was the guy making trouble with North Korea?”

He also joked about how much the president would probably hate the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, because it contains three words he despises so much. “The only name that could make him angrier is the Hillary Mexico Salad Association,” Meyers said.

Meyers also revisited his hosting duties at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011 when — as legend has it — Barack Obama’s dismissive jokes and Meyers’s minutes-long bit about Trump spurred the reality-show star to run for president. Trump denies his campaign had anything to do with getting roasted that evening, but that didn’t stop Meyers from trying to make lightning strike twice. He turned his attention to Oprah Winfrey, sitting in the front row as this year’s Cecil B. DeMille Award recipient, and tried to pull some reverse psychology on her, saying that she’s completely unfit to run the country.

The closest thing Meyers got to being politically topical was when he introduced the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association by welcoming a “president who actually is a stable genius.” Frances McDormand echoed him later when she marveled at the association’s ability to actually elect a woman.

Mostly though, the stories people were telling and the rage that they felt revolved around #MeToo, Time’s Up and other initiatives seeking equality and accountability. The priorities have shifted, it seems, and before those in the industry can worry about the man running the country, they’re trying to figure out how to clean up their own corner of the world.

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GenVolkov on January 8th, 2018 at 18:14 UTC »

The Golden Globes were last night?

mackfredmack on January 8th, 2018 at 17:30 UTC »

There was also barely a mention of how everyone there was aware of all this sexual abuse going on and chose to stay silent until it was trendy to do otherwise.

MlNDB0MB on January 8th, 2018 at 16:56 UTC »

He did make references to him, but not that many. And of those jokes, all of them had elements that were germane to the Golden Globes.