A sassy and salty Meryl Streep stepped out Tuesday night in support of building a National Women’s History Museum on the National Mall.
Streep said the legislation, which would permit the museum to purchase land on 12th Street and Independence Avenue, was stalled in the Senate.
“I’m not usually bitter, and I am bitter,” she said. “All it will cost them is the caloric energy it takes to get their hand up. Aye.”
With all the women in Congress currently in support of the museum, Streep jabbed the men of Congress for holding things up.
“We need to get them to come to a vote,” the Academy Award winner said slyly. “We know how to do that.”
She used the ground zero mosque controversy to illustrate why a physical building is important. The actress lives just blocks from where the twin towers formerly stood. “I live not very far from the mosque that has been offering up prayers five times a day for over 30 years. I live five blocks from the strip club in the same neighborhood that offers pole dances and more, I’m quite sure, more than fives times a day, on what some people call sacred ground,” she explained. “Symbols matter … buildings and monuments stand for something in people’s hearts.”
Streep also pointed out how absurd it was that a museum for women didn’t already exist.
“There is no Women’s History Museum in Washington,” she said. “There is a postal museum, there’s a spy museum, a Newseum, a textile museum, a crime and punishment museum, a wax museum, the national Bonsai museum and there is a building that is a museum for buildings.”
Beside offering her time, Streep finished her speech by giving cash: a full million dollars.
“Let’s build this damn thing,” she said.
