Meryl Streep delivered an eloquent, brave, heartfelt speech at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony. Here is an artist and businesswoman we can all admire. Yet Donald Trump attempted to belittle her accomplishments by referring to her — of all people — as “overrated.”
As if that weren’t lowbrow enough for a man about to become U.S. president, many in the press have squeezed her into the easy category of “Hollywood elites.” Yet Donald Trump is clearly a business elite — not a man of the streets, born in dire circumstances, pulled up only by his own bootstraps, and a person of and for the people.
The international media celebration of senior business executives has, in many cases, enabled membership at the higher levels alone, rather than leadership acumen, to stand for competence. How often we’ve heard that Donald Trump is a businessman as if that endows him with what it takes to be a leader — to motivate people in ways that produce exceptional products within a culture characterized by moral principles rejecting of destructive insider politics.
How simplistic our thinking has become. How facile the application of categories. We have allowed ourselves to be duped by either-or boxes instead of examining categories and insisting that the press responsibly do so too.
Business is not a religion. We need not kneel. It is not superior to other forms of human activity. We must start thinking — using our minds to reject simplistic categories that foster false dichotomies and demean so that the lesser among us might seem grand.
Kathleen has been a featured blogger at Huffington Post since 2005 and with Big Think.
2 Responses to Business Elites Get a Pass by the Press — While Meryl Streep is labeled a “Hollywood Elite”