Because he is angry at President Trump and the Kennedy Center board for adding the President’s name to the cultural center, musician Chuck Redd cancelled the Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center that has been a tradition for more than 20 years. “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press . Redd is a drummer and vibraphone player who has presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006.

Well, jazz musicians aren’t known for their critical thinking skills or ethics acumen. Let me get this straight, Chuck: you think a fair way to punish Trump and the board for the name change is to disappoint jazz fans in the Washington area who had nothing to do with the decision. Nice.

What an asshole.

I yield to no one in my disgust for the name change: it was gratuitous, obnoxious and stupid, and Trump should have rejected the “honor” if it wasn’t his idea, though it probably was. The Kennedy family has every reason to be furious, and indeed it is, But how does cancelling the annual Christmas Eve jazz concert help anyone or fix anything? It’s a tantrum, and we’ve seen and heard too many of these from Trump haters already this year. This is like kicking the dog because your wife dented the BMW. It is like yelling at your kid because you didn’t get a promotion at work. Let’s be basic so even Chuck can understand it: He’s mad at A, so he hurts B to make A feel bad. But A shouldn’t feel bad, because the fault is 100% Chuck’s. And I guarantee that President Trump will not feel bad at all. He will feel that Chuck is a jerk, and he will be correct in that assessment.

Meanwhile, the AP, as is its wont now that it has abandoned objective journalism, misleads readers by writing, “As of last Friday, the building’s facade reads The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. According to the White House, the president’s handpicked board approved the decision, which scholars have said violates the law.”

Untrue. Some “legal scholars,” especially those who hate the President (that is, most of them) have said that. Others who are capable of objectivity and whom bias hasn’t made stupid have expressed doubts about that analysis. For example, here’s Professor Jonathan Turley, who is definitely a legal scholar and a prominent one:

The Center was originally built as the National Cultural Center in a 1958 law. It was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center by an act of Congress in 1964 as a living memorial.

The key issue is how that designation was made. It was contained in a statute passed by Congress. Titled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 20 U.S.C. 3, states that “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”…the Center is named by an act of Congress. It is hard to find any authority of the board that would undo or delegate that power. There is a legitimate question whether a name change is an “additional memorial or plaque,” but it would seem to be so. Still, the Trump Administration could … tell a court… the statute does not expressly say that name changes are a memorial..If a court agrees that the statute reflects a clear congressional intent to bar any change to the memorial, the question is how it can be challenged…The question is who has standing to challenge the change. Are Kennedy family members injured in a concrete way to satisfy standing? Associational standing from historical preservation groups can be tricky. 

Tricky? But I thought legal scholars all agree that the name change is illegal! As I’ve already said here, it is definitely unethical. So is metaphorically kicking Kennedy Center patrons because a drummer is mad at the President. And telling readers that a legal question is settled when it is not.