In Defense of “The Trump Center for the Performing Arts”

A Night at the Kennedy Center: “Art” in the Officious State, Part II

I went to the Kennedy Center on Saturday — my mother has a thing for Handel’s Messiah and it’s nice to give her a treat for Christmas.

The performance was preceded by the Star-Spangled Banner, something I’d never encountered before, but which is now apparently policy. Everyone seemed to stand except for us:

The text of the work was apparently something of a rebuttal to what would today be called right wing evangelicalism. The stress is on Messiah as comforter and Prince of Peace. Whom you stand for.

This might be news to some. The worker (volunteer?) who scanned our tickets had a pin that showed a US flag in the shape of a cross on her jacket. And a flyer for the “museum of the Bible” (funded by David Green of the Hobby Lobby fortune) was inserted into the program.

George Frideric Handel apparently said “I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better.”

Were I better prepared, I’d have worn a “Jesus was a Palestinian” t-shirt or such. As it was, I was happy to wear my keffiyeh. I went to the “Hall of Nations” — as I always get a kick about it excluding the Palestinian, Iranian, Cuban and North Korean flags, as I recently noted.

My mother and myself, photo by dear Julia. The left side shows no Iranian flag. The right side shows no Palestinian flag and the Polish and Moroccan flags upside-down. (Notice the Polish and Indonesian flags appear identical. Perhaps an international incident will result from this foolishness.)

But I noticed something else this time: The Polish and Moroccan flags were upside-down. There really is no end to the idiocy. You’d think diplomats from those countries would have noticed and rectified the matter, but perhaps they’re too busy getting their payoffs or such.

If I were to return to the Center, I’d consider wearing a Palestinian, Iranian, Cuban and North Korean flag as a cape or a shawl to compensate for their banishment. Others are free to run with the idea.

As Messiah puts it:

“Why do the nations so furiously rage together: and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed.”¹

A great delusion of our time is that the US (and Israeli) governments are on the right side of that equation.

Some are already delighting in the hope that a next Democratic administration will take Trump’s name off. Would that they fix the deeper malady.

Trump of course just put his name on the Center. Democrats are hyperventilating that this violates the statute that created the center (which is true), even as they ignore a myriad of far more serious laws he’s violated.

But as I think of it, perhaps there’s a logic to Trump putting his name on the place. He is, after all, primarily a showman. I’d said in my last piece — “Art in the Officious State, Part I” — that it was likely a mistake to name a performing arts center for a political figure. And JFK, as Monika Wiesak argues, was the last president of the United States. Trump is a showman and conman for the establishment. A media creation. The PT Barnum of politics.

Frank Zappa said, “Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.” As things stand the prime US contribution to “art” is con-artistry, which of course Trump is a leading practitioner of.

If that might change, our dual tasks are to radically alter the system and have a meaningful, actual culture emerge.

1. I wonder if this inspired Sara Thomsen’s lovely “Is it for Freedom” with lines like: “Rulers of the nations as you fuss and fight…”