"When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."  And that was just part of Meryl Streep's speech at Hollywood's Golden Globe Award Show aimed directly at US president-elect Donald Trump.

Meryl Streep received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures at the award show, and slammed Donald Trump's "performance" in her acceptance speech.

The much-celebrated actress spoke of 2016's standout "performance":  The US Republican party presidential candidate mocking disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.  "There was nothing good about it, but it did its job," said Ms. Streep.  "It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can't get it out my head because it wasn't in a movie, it was in real life.  That instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same."

"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence," she continued. "When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose."

Earlier, Streep repeated the joke told by UK actor Hugh Laurie, who noted that the Golden Globes were chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which they called "the most vilified segments in American society right now" - Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.

"But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway?  It's just a bunch of people from other places," Streep said, expanding the premise.  She brought up her own upbringing in New Jersey, plus the non-Los Angeles backgrounds of Sarah Paulson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis, Dev Patel, and Ryan Reynolds.  She asked sarcastically, "Where are their birth certificates?"

Meryl Streep also urged journalists to do their jobs, and urged everyone else to support the Committee To Protect Journalists.

Stars generally stayed away from politics in the speeches, although host Jimmy Fallon - who is not known for picking sides or partaking in controversy - did address the elephant in the room early in the show.

After his teleprompter cut out at the top of his opening monologue, Fallon went with a Trump joke, saying the Golden Globe Award Show is a place where they still "honor the popular vote" (Trump lost the popular vote by 2.8 million ballots, but is president-elect because of a sickening quirk in the us election system).

Then, Fallon compared the US president-elect to the immature, spoiled, and malevolent King Joffrey of "Game of Thrones":  "Many people wondering what it would be like if King Joffrey had lived.  Well, in 12 days we're gonna find out."

He finished by joking that voting on the awards were tabulated by "the accounting firm of Ernst, Young and Putin".