Kennedy Center board mutes Black woman, 'unanimously' votes to rename building
The White House claims it's the Trump-Kennedy Center now. (It's not.)
I love the Kennedy Center Honors. My dad always records it when I come home for Christmas, and my parents and I look forward to watching it together every year. Heart’s tribute cover of “Stairway to Heaven” at the 2012 ceremony, which featured the late John Bonham’s son Jason on drums and brought actual members of Led Zeppelin to tears in their seats, moved me so much that I’ve probably watched the YouTube video and made other people watch it with me at least 20 times since it aired. My friends are probably nodding and sighing while reading this, because I’ve actually made groups of them put on that video at parties.
My point is, while there is a lot to be offended about these days, I have been unreasonably offended by his assault on the Kennedy Center, which was built as a tribute to President JFK and has never until now been used as a political football. In February, Trump abruptly fired the center’s board and installed himself as chair, mumbling some excuse about the center’s decision to host drag shows. He then hand-picked all new members of the board, including second lady Usha Vance, Fox News hosts Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham, and word-vomiting White House chief of staff Susie Wiles—not exactly the kind of bipartisan group of art-lovers meant to preserve the center’s profound cultural legacy. And as Kennedy Center ticket sales plummeted by half, Trump decided also to personally select this year’s honorees based solely on how much they like Trump and declared that he will be hosting the show himself, because his narcissism truly knows no bounds.
The honorees this year, by the way, include George Strait, Sly Stallone, Gene Simmons, and Gloria Gaynor, several of whom (ahem, the men) looked like wax figures of themselves in the White House recently. (And yes, Gaynor is MAGA.)
This brings us to today, when Karoline Leavitt announced out of the blue that the Kennedy Center board has “unanimously” voted to rename the building the Trump-Kennedy Center to soothe our despot’s ego. Here’s her post, which presents this all as a total surprise that Trump had nothing to do with:
First of all, congratulating President Kennedy, who is dead, about his legacy being shat upon by a fascist clown is insane.
Secondly, this is illegal. Congress did not give the board the authority to change the name of the Kennedy Center. Much like the “Gulf of America” and the “Department of War,” this is a fake name that none of us are obligated to use just because Trump cut down some willow trees around the building and claimed he improved it.
Thirdly, the vote was apparently not unanimous. An hour after Leavitt’s announcement, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the board, spoke up on X and Bluesky about having been muted on the call and during the vote:
Is there anything more on the nose for this administration than literally muting a Black woman so that they can claim the vote was unanimous to rename a beloved culture and arts institution after an openly white supremacist president?
I’m taking a moment to be sad about this. There are obviously far more hideous things happening at the moment, like our looming invasion of Venezuela on behalf of oil companies and the dismantling of the world’s preeminent climate change research center in Colorado. But watching Trump scoot his slimy ass all over the arts, on top of all the other indignities and assaults on our constitutional rights, has me downright homicidal this holiday season. And watching him fall on his face and garner the worst ratings in the history of the Kennedy Center Honors will only slightly make me feel better.
It's just another bullet point in an incomprehensible list of awful shit. There were plenty of conversations in this area about how to support colleagues in the theater/performing spaces at the Kennedy Center but at this point we hope they just jump ship.