I wish Meryl Streep had not unburdened herself at the Golden Globes or shared her feelings of revulsion for the president-elect.  In this prolonged season of liberal suffering, it was hardly surprising for a Hollywood legend to dump on Trump. It's so au courant!  While liberals felt Streep's comments were brave and compelling, to conservatives like me, venting her hostility at a moment when she was being honored for a well deserved award for lifetime achievements in her film career seemed self-indulgent and awkwardly off point.

Culturally speaking, political conservatives have few places to go without leftist politics being thrust in.  It's natural and legitimate for art and politics to converge.  But there is also a place for apolitical entertainment, or at least entertainment that doesn't bash conservatives.  That is darned harder to find today – not only in movies or TV shows, but also in books.

It often pops up when least expected.  Over the last few years, I have been struck by how many books I read that included anti-conservative barbs, totally extraneous to the storyline or the characters.  For example, I had been enjoying the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kittredge 'til about two thirds of the way through.  Suddenly, Olive, apropos of nothing she has done or said so far, slams the president, who happens to be from Texas and whom she considers a "moron" who looks "retarded."  (So much for not using harsh language that demeans the developmentally disabled.)  Though I had been warned that memoirist Anne Lamott was very political, I picked up her book Grace, Eventually on the recommendation of a friend.  I could not get through it.  Every few pages, she'd dredge up George Bush or Dick Cheney, whose depredations she said plunged her into depression and binge-eating.  I guess that for Lamott, grace may come eventually, but only if you're a liberal.

Still on the hunt for apolitical novels, I had high hopes for Correspondence, a charming epistolary novel about a New York-based accountant who discovers he has inherited a trove of valuable letters written by some of history's most celebrated writers, including Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, and Eliot.  As the accountant corresponds with a British rare manuscript dealer salivating to examine and purchase the collection, the two of them suddenly begin an exchange about (you'll never guess) George Bush and Tony Blair.  Both correspondents excoriate Bush and Blair for involving their countries in the Iraq war.  What this had to do with the valuable literary letters remains a mystery.

I find myself running back to such delightful, apolitical writers such as Alexander McCall Smith and the wonderful Barbara Pym.  These are writers who still have a distinctive voice, a point of view on society and culture, but allow readers to come to their own conclusions about politics.

One editor who has taught me valuable lessons about the art of memoir writing advised me to always ask myself, "Why this story, and why now?"  I wrote down this six-word question and taped it to my monitor as a reminder to always think about what I'm writing and why.  When tempted to insert something proclaiming my politics, I rethought it and refrained.

Artists, actors, writers, and other artistic creators are free to inject politics in their work and in their public pronouncements, but I wonder if they ever ask themselves if it's worth alienating such a large swath of their audience.  I wonder how many of them ask themselves: is it worth it?

Judy Gruen's forthcoming memoir, The Skeptic and the Rabbi, will be published in September by She Writes Press.