‘So much class and taste’: Kennedy Center board meetings now focused on glazing ‘great and visionary’ Dear Leader Trump

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (aka the Kennedy Center) is the beating heart of American cultural life. Established in the memory of President Kennedy, its mission is the promotion, preservation, and celebration of the very finest artists the nation has to offer.

Or at least, it was before Donald Trump got his sticky fingers all over it. Since returning to office the Kennedy Center has been squarely within his crosshairs, apparently considering its high-minded artistic mission a direct threat to his anti-intellectual stance.

And so Trump played amateur brain surgeon, cracking open the Kennedy Center’s skull, grabbing his ice-cream scoop, and going ham on the grey matter inside. Or, to put it another way, one of his first acts on returning to power was to fire the board and name himself as their chairman.

Trump now appears to be responsible for approving the artistic program, picking any cultural awardees, and ensuring that only MAGA-inclined performers are allowed to take the stage. And that’s the way it’s going to be for the next three years.

The humiliation ritual

So, how is the newly lobotomized Kennedy Center doing? Well, CNN reports that on Dec. 18 he’s hosting a board of trustees meeting in Palm Beach, Florida (the Kennedy Center is located in D.C.). An anonymous attendee has also revealed what a board meeting crammed full of Trump brown-nosers sounds like.

Apparently, members take turns to “talk about how great and visionary the president is and how he has so much class and taste.” North Korea, eat your heart out!

But hey, if the Kennedy Center is apparently to be devoted to glazing the famously classy and tasteful Donald Trump, maybe they can launch an artistic partnership across borders with the Pyongyang International House of Culture?

I’m sure both sets of board members can breathlessly debate amongst themselves which of their Dear Leaders has the finest golf swing, which is more dashingly handsome or which of them has the most glittering vision of the future of their Republic.

Time will tell whether the Kennedy Center – possibly soon the “Trump-Kennedy Center” – will recover from this extended humiliation ritual. The gutting of staff, the perversion of its artistic mission, and the reconfiguration of America’s cultural jewel into an efficient Trump brown-nosing machine is humiliating.

And that faint whirring sound from Arlington Cemetery coming from the direction of President Kennedy’s grave that sounds suspiciously like spinning? Probably nothing to be worried about.