Meryl Streep’s Eulogy for Margaret Tatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013)
Source: Wikipedia
Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics. It is hard to imagine a part of our current history that has not been affected by measures she put forward in the UK at the end of the 20th century. Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others. There is an argument that her steadfast, almost emotional loyalty to the pound sterling has helped the UK weather the storms of European monetary uncertainty.
But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas — wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now — without corruption — I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle.
“How often do you look back and really reflect on what you’ve done? The insignificance of it all. Pointless arguments. Inside jokes. Funny haircuts. But do you ever wonder how you’ll be remembered? Or if what you’ve done and what you’re doing means anything at all? What will your songs sound like when you’re dead and gone? Will tears fall when the last note is sung? And how will your story be told? Will your words leave a bitter taste in their mouths or will they even remember you at all?
