“The boycott, which is taking hold because D.C.’s arts patrons are overwhelmingly wealthy, woke Democrats, is certain to have negative effect on audiences and artists. The National Symphony Orchestra, to name one boycott target, is hanging by a thread financially already. It has no other venue open to it. But the boycotters literally don’t care. Their aim is to grandstand, signal their virtue, and declare their intractable opposition to the elected President of the United States. Artists are also engaging in this destructive and illogical protest. The Cookers, an “all-star jazz septet that will ignite the Terrace Theater stage with fire and soul” and a New York dance company canceled scheduled appearances at the Kennedy Center on New Years Eve, so as with the annual Christmas Eve jazz concert hosted by Chuck Redd that also canceled at the last minute, audiences looking forward to the event are being punished as proxies for the hated POTUS.

“How these protests have any impact on President Trump has yet to be explained…I would love to be in a debate with these self-righteous jackasses. When did the name of a building or theater have any substantive effect on what went on within it? Ethics Alarms has taken a clear stance regarding Trump’s politically inept willingness to have his name stamped on the building, but the hypocrisy of these “moral” protesters is spectacular. Has any artist since the Center was opened expressed qualms about performing in a venue honoring a serial adulterer, a President who jeopardized American interests by having sexual liaisons with a foreign spy and mob boss’s mistress, and who has been credibly accused of Epstein-like sex abuses by alleged victims? Trump is a narcissist, but JFK was a sociopath…”

In response to the legal reversal, which he had to expect, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey.” Translation: “So go ahead, assholes. Here’s your cherished theater venue (that no one without a trust fund can afford to attend), and much good may it do you. You fix it. You hold all of your little woke club meetings of musicians and actors for your all-white audiences. You continue to host pilgrimages to the gaudy, overblown mausoleum to perpetuate the Camelot myth, and worship at the neck of that giant JFK bust…

… that looks like it was fashioned out of chewing gum.”

“I’m out.”

The Washington Post, being ridiculous as usual, actually wrote, “Trump has made the planned overhaul of the cultural center a priority for his second term.” A priority? Seriously? It was an afterthought at most. A hobby, maybe. The vast, vast majority of the American public doesn’t think about the Kennedy Center even once a year. Only a sliver of a sliver of a percentage point of Americans have ever seen a performance there. My deranged anti-Trump lawyer friends keep saying that the President defies court orders (he doesn’t), so how will they explain it when he doesn’t defy this one? (It’s a well-reasoned opinion, incidentally.) Will the “No Kings” nutballs now rejoice that they stopped Trump from making monuments to himself, like Seti the Great? They won! Whoopee!

The inhabitants of other more troubled nations must marvel at one that has the time and luxury to be incensed over the name on a building.