<up-to-a-point>
Well, this is what the Center's website calls it. The wording on the building tells a different story:The shadows (of the scaffolding?) reduce the punchiness of this picture,
but you'll get a (nasty) taste of the braggadoccio and
bare-facedness of the DiC's coup.~ the second 'the' sticks out ;ike an prange thumb
</up-to-a-point>
I do hope someone sues – for a billion or two, perhaps. There must be a Kennedy or two left who resents this usurpation? (Not Bobby of course; he's drunk the Kool Aid.) Has the Incredible Orange Hulk no shame? (Rhetorical question: Of course not.)
I have been aware for a few weeks now of the DiC assault on Culture, mostly informed by The Rest Is Politics (US). But I've been waiting for a more measured critique (Anthony Scaramucci – 'The Mooch' to us insiders [and indeed to anyone else] – is amusingly vituperative, but I wouldn't call his views measured.)
A recent episode (13 February) of the Guardian's Politics Weekly America provided the well-researched nudge I was waiting for.
Also from the Guardian (but not that podcast):
Trump announced a two-year closure of the Kennedy Center, citing construction needs to make the “finest performing arts facility of its kind, anywhere in the world”.
Writing on Truth Social on Sunday evening, Trump added that the center’s closure will pave way for a “new and spectacular entertainment complex”.
<parenthesis>
(The DiC's 2-year moratorium is presumably a face-saving exercise – giving the adminstrators a chance to put together a programme of artists who don't mind supporting white supremacist homophobes ...
<tangent>
These cancellations are a two-way street (though there are dozens more who pull out than are told their services are not wanted) The Wikipedia list of cancellations includes the withdrawal of an invitation to the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C.
</tangent>
...in a monument to 'Murrican tastelessness. Wikipedia's list of those who pulled out before the closure later this year stand at 40 [and counting?])
</parenthesis>
You have been warned.
But the idea of an autocrat slapping his (a female perp doesn't spring to mind) name on anything that... doesn't move isn't new. The ICC T20 World Cup final last Sunday was played in the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. And the tradition of autocrats eponymizing (don't bother looking this one up; it's all my own work...
<parenthesis>...) willy-nilly goes back at least as far as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. (I imagine Mausolus helped draw up the plans.) And only a few years later Alexander named his new capital Alexandria. Autocrats name things after themselves; they always have done, and they always will do. (Come to think of it, there's a red flag here: if a ruler starts eponymizing, stand by to protect your constitution.)
[at least, I thought it was. A few dictionaries recognize it.]
</parenthesis>
