It’s crazy that President Donald Trump’s ego led him to win a second term inexplicably while seeing him take so many avoidable L’s. His pathological need to be seen was evident again this month, when the board he elected voted to put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, after he had repeatedly pressed them to do so. Because of this decision, many artists withdrew from performing at the Kennedy Center.
According to NBC News, the first artist to pull out of a Kennedy Center concert because of the name change was jazz musician Chuck Redd, who stopped the Center’s annual Christmas Eve jazz concert. Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell took the cancellation graciously, respectfully, and…who am I kidding, you know the old guy wasn’t unusual about it.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last minute — apparently in response to the Center’s recent rebranding, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is an old intolerance and a costly one for a nonprofit Arts Center,” Grenell wrote. “This is your legal notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political practice.”
Since Redd’s cancellation, many artists have done the same.
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Jazz group The Cookers were due to play a New Year’s Eve show, but released a statement announcing their cancellation. Although they didn’t specifically say it was because of the name change, the statement strongly suggests that it was.
“Jazz was born out of a struggle and an unrelenting emphasis on freedom: freedom of thought, of speech, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for decades, and that history still shapes us,” the statement read. “We hope this time will leave room for reflection, not anger.”
Singer Kristy Lee similarly canceled a show scheduled for January, writing in a statement that the cancellation is painful “but the loss of my integrity will cost me more than any payment.”
“When American history starts being treated as something you can block, erase, rename, or change someone’s name, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep at night,” said Lee, who described himself as “just a folk singer from Alabama.”
Apparently, the people who run the Kennedy Center don’t take kindly to cancellations. “Any artist who cancels their show at the Trump Kennedy Center because of political disagreements has no courage or principles—they are selfish, intolerant, and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to sing for all people,” Kennedy Center spokeswoman Roma Daravi said in a statement.
You know, if the president started governing all the people instead of withholding federal funding from schools and saying it doesn’t fit his views, or using the Border Patrol, ICE, and the National Guard to terrorize Democrat-led cities, maybe we could have an honest conversation about “working for all the people.”
Despite having a large part, these people are unbearable. Why would anyone want to make any organization that would put these criminals? In addition to dealing with the comfort of musicians, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed a lawsuit arguing that renaming the Kennedy Center must be done through Congress.
“Federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits it from changing its name without an act of Congress,” said six Democratic lawmakers who are board members of the Kennedy Center, including Beatty and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a joint statement.
Trump has a strange obsession with the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center’s board used to be bipartisan, but that changed this year when Trump fired all the Democrats and replaced him with a group of loyalists. He changed the plan, which it led to the cancellation of Pride events, and Trump even hosted the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors earlier this month, which pulled the plug. lowest ratings ever.
It’s almost like taking a hyper-partisan approach to art is bound to alienate all the viewers who didn’t vote for any of this nonsense. Who knew?
BREAKFUT:
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