NPR: Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed an emergency motion late Thursday evening asking a federal judge to stop the trustees of the Kennedy Center from putting President Trump's name back on the front of the arts complex. She also asked the judge to stop the trustees' plan to rename the physical site of the center the "President Donald J. Trump Plaza."
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Trump renaming the Kennedy Center is one of the most blatantly selfish things he could have done. This historical institution for the arts was named by congress in honor of JFK. For decades it has been a center for creativity and championed by the US government. For a president who has cut millions of funding to the arts, publicly denounced pioneers of live performance and the politics that come along with it, it is hilariously hypocritical to want it named after himself. Not only does it disrespect JFKs name, but it sets a tone for the center moving forward, no doubt the Trump- appointed board will begin to get more and more conservative with the art it produces. The purpose of art is to educate and let people experience differing opinions. If we are picking and choosing what is shown by the values of a president that does not align with over 50% of the American people, it is not doing its job.
Donald Trump and his handpicked board of trustees have treated a national living memorial, a space that was originally created by Congress to honor a fallen president, a space that ultimately belongs to the American people, as nothing more than a private real estate cash grab to be tagged with personal branding. Looking at this article and seeing the entrance of this venue covered in tarps while the legal "experts" discuss some stone-carved letters makes for such a truly strange sight for not just patrons but people that used to attend this institution for true drawdropping performances. Nonetheless, the Kennedy Center is a place of expression, and this foolish man has been attempting to strip that away from the jump. There is not a single reason why his name should be anywhere near this building, and I hope it stays the way it was intended as a form of homage and not whatever he's trying to make it.
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