"Not surprising, but it is disgusting."

 

 

Matt Davenport:

The Kennedy Center is our nation’s capitol’s only official living memorial to the late President John F. Kennedy. It was named by our Congress and President Johnson to honor Kennedy in the months following his assassination to honor his memory and legacy in promoting the arts and his tireless efforts to make the arts center first approved by President Eisenhower a reality.

President Kennedy promoted the arts as a source of national pride. He invited the renowned contralto, Marian Anderson, to sing and the famous poet, Robert Frost, to give a reading at his inauguration. He invited musicians to perform at the White House, brought the Mona Lisa to the National Gallery for temporary display with French government cooperation, and he and Mrs. Kennedy hosted operas, ballets, and theatrical performances of Shakespeare at new White House cultural events. And the center bearing his name has continued his legacy since its 1971 opening, hosting plays and operas and soloists while co-producing musicals and ballets and free public arts performances and educational programs for all visitors.

It was not a surprise that our current president fired the nonpartisan board overseeing the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman. It has not been a surprise to see him slash arts budgets and cancel previously awarded arts grants and educational arts and music programs, and cancel federal funding for the NEA, an endowment first envisioned and championed by Kennedy. Or to see him bulldoze the East Wing once graced by Mrs. Kennedy, or cement over the lawn of Mrs. Kennedy’s Rose Garden. Or install a wall of bronze plaques in the West Wing portico filled with kindergarten-level insults hurled at former presidents So it is not surprising today to wake up to the news that he wants to (unlawfully) add his OWN name to the Kennedy Center, something insecure, third-world dictators do.

Not surprising, but it is disgusting. He represents the ugliness of our time, rising to the top in a hunger-games marketplace of egotism and noise and branding and material greed and white nationalism where our White House is treated as his own piece of real estate to be defaced with ballrooms and gold he has grifted from his rich friends and working-class supporters. We have turned our back on the days when we cared about art and literature and music and the simple beauty of being moved. Because there is no art in this White House, no curiosity, no poetry, no literature, no theater, no selfless embrace of a national history bigger than any one person, just a dark cloud of hate now controlling national institutions he sees as nothing more than a stage he can use to promote himself and call our fellow Americans “garbage” and “vermin” and “deranged” and “low-IQ” and “piggy” and “stupid.”

He will one day be gone from our White House. And it will be the Kennedy Center once again. Until then, it’s good to remember the words of Kennedy himself, who in a speech to Amherst College of the Arts in the last month of his life said, “When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

In addition to being a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter, we can add "vandal" to what Trump is. He has vandalized a national monument by attaching his name to a memorial designated to our late 35th POTUS, John F. Kennedy. 

In a few years, Trump will be gone, and we will have the pleasure of redressing the Congressionally designated memorial that Trump has debased and sullied with his name.