The grandeur. The grandeur.
Great post, Karoline. A few notes:
Your boss has already renamed the Kennedy Center “The Trump Kennedy Center” on the website? If he had to break the law, couldn’t he at least have gone with “The Kennedy Trump Center,” given the Kennedy name’s tenure, Kennedy’s critical role in elevating the arts in American culture, and K coming before T in the alphabet?
Congress intended the Kennedy Center to remain “the Kennedy Center” in perpetuity. We know this because the bipartisan legislation that ushered it into existence was entitled “20 U.S. Code § 76i - John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” Not “20 U.S. Code § 76i - John F. Kennedy (and Any Future President Looking to Steal Some Valor) Center for the Performing Arts.”
In case that wasn’t clear enough, the relevant passage in the legislation reads: “The Board shall construct for the Smithsonian Institution, with funds raised by voluntary contributions, a building to be designated as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Congress named the Center after Kennedy because Kennedy poured enormous amounts of energy into elevating the arts in American culture. The only energy Trump has poured into the arts involved lying on top of a porn star for two deeply unsatisfying minutes.
Fun fact: Congress directed the facility’s construction in 1958. Congress voted to name the center in honor of Kennedy two months after Kennedy got his brains blown out by an assassin. It is grotesque for your boss to muscle in on a murdered president’s legacy. If he wants to stamp his name on American culture, he can sponsor a Frank Stallone residency at the Mohegan Sun.
This is, by law, the only memorial to Kennedy in DC. (“The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, designated by this subchapter, shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.”) He’s appropriating the only memorial to a beloved, tragically fallen president standing in our nation’s capital. It’s not just a dick move. It’s a dick-with-penis-cancer move.
A passage in your note reads “Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future!” Are you referring to a Back to the Future spec script where Donald J. Trump travels back in time and uses his imposing physicality to overpower Lee Harvey Oswald? JFK has been dead for 52 years, ma’am. He’d probably be dead even if “Medbeds” existed, or, if not dead, certainly not spry enough attend Lee Greenwood concerts. At 108, he’d be too old even for a senileophile like you. Frankly, even if Kennedy were somehow miraculously still alive and high-functioning, Donald J. Trump does not appear fit to form a “long” partnership with anyone these days. His body looks like a McDonald’s cartoon character’s, and his mind believes that Medbeds are real.
The Broken Windows Theory was not intended to apply only to actual windows broken by people too poor to afford a ticket to a Kennedy Center performance. Changing the name is illegal, full stop. And while it might seem trivial to you, it serves as an unambiguous reminder to the nation of just how little Donald Trump cares about the rule of law. He can’t hide behind his supposed right to execute his policy agenda, because the only policy at play here is self-aggrandizement. Slapping his name on a historic cultural center doesn’t exactly protect our nation from the evils of Woke DEI.
You’re already building a ballroom of indeterminate enormity. Isn’t slapping your name on that enough? Are you worried that it will never be completed? Or that the next president will demolish it with dynamite like one of your bankrupt casinos?
Why would you want to be associated with the Kennedy Center anyway? Its mission statement ties it to diversity. It must, by law, “strive to ensure that the education and outreach programs and policies of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States.”
Oh, right, Trump doesn’t care about laws. Or excellence. I dare you to name one Lee Greenwood song that isn’t “God Bless the USA.”
The highly respected board? The closest this collection of cretins has come to cultural relevance is when Joey Ramone wrote a song about Maria Bartiromo before she lost her goddamn mind — and she couldn’t even be bothered to go see him play it live at CBGB.
The only kind thing positive I can say about this is that it still isn’t as depraved as that time Trump stormed the stage at a pediatric AIDS benefit he hadn’t been invited to or given a dime to. Anyone who witnessed this one-man plague saying “Look at me, I’m a big important man!” at an event intended to help invisible children afflicted with a horrific disease probably wasn’t surprised when his administration refused to commemorate World AIDS Day this year.
Honestly, it would have been more appropriate to rename it the Epstein Kennedy Center. Trump and Epstein are both sexual abusers, but at least Epstein donated some of his ill-gotten gains to the advancement of culture.
Speaking of Epstein… isn’t some news related to him supposed to break today?