‘The time is up for terrible men’ Oprah Winfrey said in probably one of the most iconic speeches ever made in the award’s history.
While accepting the annual Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, the entertainment mogul delivered a rousing speech where she said that soon a time will come when women won’t have to say “Me too” ever again.
She said, “I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day final dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me Too’ again!”
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Winfrey was greeted by a standing ovation. In her speech, she spoke against sexual assault and harassment of women. She and most people at the awards wore black to show support for Time’s Up anti-sexual harassment and pro-equality in the workplace fundraising campaign.
She also created history by becoming the first ever black woman to receive the honor since it was first handed out in 1952.
“In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother’s house in Milwaukee, watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history – ‘The winner is Sidney Poitier.'”
Winfrey went on to explain that moment, “Up to the stage came the most elegant man I’d ever seen. I’d never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried very many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats, as my mom came through the door bone-tired from cleaning other peoples’ houses.”
But all she could do was quote Poitier and say, “Amen, amen.”
Winfrey continued her speech by calling out a press that is “under siege” and a climate where women are being empowered to speak up and say “Me too” – and men are listening.
“I want, tonight, to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know,” noted Winfrey.
Adding, “For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up”, which earned her a second ovation.
The annual DeMille award honors those with “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”.
Recent winners include Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Woody Allen, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Warren Beatty.