MS NOW is live-streaming the removal of Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Right now.
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Federal Judge Christopher Cooper turned down a request by the current administration of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to delay his previous order to remove Trump’s name from the building and all other signage.
Soon after his inauguration, Trump replaced the bipartisan board of the Kennedy Center with his allies, who promptly selected Trump as chairman of the board. The only non-Trump Democrat appointee who remained was ex-officio member Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). The other board members tried to prevent her from participating in votes, but she persisted and filed the lawsuit to take Trump’s name down.
Trump has nearly destroyed the Kennedy Center since he took control. He replaced key administrators with his lackeys. The shake-up alienated audiences and performers. Artists canceled their performances, and ticket sales plummeted.
The board addressed the crisis by deciding to close the Kennedy Center for two years for renovations, possibly total demolition. The federal judge blocked that decision.
The dilemma now is that the Kennedy Center sits mostly empty now, with nothing lined up for the next season, when the board expected that the Center would be closed for renovation.
The Washington Post reported:
A federal judge Friday denied the Kennedy Center’s last-ditch motion to delay removing President Donald Trump’s name from the performing arts venue, as crews erected scaffolding next to the building less than 12 hours before the court-ordered deadline to do so.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center’s lawyers failed to demonstrate they were likely to win their appeal or that the center would suffer “irreparable harm” if Trump’s name were removed….
In February 2025, Trump purged the center’s board of trustees and replaced them with political allies who then elected him board chair. In December, those loyalists voted to rename the venue, and a day later, crews added Trump’s name to the exterior.
Trump claimed that the board’s vote to do so was a surprise, but he had joked about naming the center after himself for months. Within hours his name was on the website, and the next morning the building’s sign read: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Justice Department lawyers representing Trump later acknowledged that, given the speed with which the signage was installed, it had been “prepared and/or purchased prior to the Board’s vote the day before.”
Did you see the Tony awards last night? It was a great show, celebrating Broadway, celebrating the young people who sing and dance and act, and the creative talent of all ages and kinds that create magic onstage.
It was joyful!
Watch this song from a new rendition of Cats, called The Jellicle Cats. What talent!
For years, I have thought about the contrast between The Oscars and the Tony awards. I watch both, and every year I find the Oscars slow, sometimes tedious, and the musical numbers are usually dull.
Why?
The answer is obvious. The people who do the musical numbers at the Oscars were assembled to perform, they rehearse and rehearse, and they put on a good show. But never as good as the Tony awards.
Why?
Because the musical numbers at the Tony awards are performed by singers and dancers who have performed those numbers hundreds of times, eight shows a week.
What a difference!
I loved the Tony awards 2026.
In Trump’s ongoing effort to stamp his atrocious taste on the nation’s Capitol, he is pushing full-steam-ahead to gain required approvals for his disgustingly gaudy Triumphal Arch. To make sure that he would gain the support of two review panels, he fired all their members and replaced them with Trump flunkies. Hundreds of letters poured in, overwhelmingly opposing the Arch. No matter. The “Commission on the Arts,” wholly owned by Trump gave their approval without dissent to what will be the largest such arch in the world and the gaudiest.
Luke Broadwater of The Washington Post wrote:
The Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved President Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington, even after the president rejected the panel’s suggestion to remove the large statues of golden eagles and a winged angel atop the structure.
“Washington is not a static city,” the panel’s chairman, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., said before making a motion to fast-track approval of the project. “It must grow to allow the next 250 years of Americans to celebrate their accomplishments.”
He added that the arch was “beautiful.”
Mr. Trump did agree to accommodate some of the panel’s suggested changes, including removing the statues of gold lions that were positioned lower on the arch.
The arts panel, which is filled with Mr. Trump’s appointees, has an advisory role on the design of the project, but no enforcement power. The same panel also fast-tracked approval of Mr. Trump’s $400 million ballroom, bypassing the normal review process on a project that would transform the profile of the White House.
The president has sought to overhaul any entities that might normally stand in the way of his plans to remake Washington, including firing the entire Commission of Fine Arts board and replacing its members with his appointees.
Thomas Luebke, the panel’s secretary, said to the board members before the motion that a project such as the arch would normally undergo an additional review.
“There is a final design that would normally come after this with more documentation of the issues of details, structure, everything else about it,” Mr. Luebke said. But, he added, the panel could also “choose, just like you did with the ballroom, to say ‘We’re done.’”
The future of the arch is still uncertain, however. The plans are scheduled to go next month before the National Capital Planning Commission, which is also controlled by allies of Mr. Trump. The project also faces a legal challenge.
A group of Vietnam War veterans has sued to stop construction of the arch, citing a lack of congressional authority and arguing that the arch would obstruct the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Many critics of the plan have contended that the grandeur of the arch detracts from the solemnity that should be observed at the cemetery nearby.
The architect designing the monument, Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, said Mr. Trump had rejected the suggestion to remove the large statues atop the structure because the arch is a monument for the living, not the dead.
“The intent of the arch is a celebration in America of 250 years of greatness, freedom, and posterity, for which we can only thank the wisdom of our founders and God’s providence,” he said. “While it may celebrate the victories of America in various theories of war and the sacrifice of our fallen heroes, it is not primarily monument dedicated to the dead, but to the living.”
The structure will allow 80 visitors per hour to go inside the arch, Mr. Charbonneau said.
Before the vote, Mr. Luebke informed members that they had received about 600 new messages about the project. Only one letter writer was in favor of the project without major changes, he said.
Mr. Luebke said about half of those writing letters raised concerns about the arch’s closeness to Arlington Cemetery, “that this in fact disrespects the cemetery and military sacrifice,” he said. “The other ones have to do with misuse of public funds, that it’s a gaudy or synthetically incompatible design, that is authoritarian,” among other concerns.
Elizabeth Merritt, deputy general counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, testified that her organization “remains extremely concerned about the location, the height, the scale, and the design of the proposed arch.”
“Arlington National Cemetery is a living memorial that hosts hundreds of funeral services every month,” she said. “The arch, as proposed, would dominate the national cemetery.”
In the lawsuit seeking to block construction of the arch, Vietnam War veterans maintain that Mr. Trump cannot build it without the authorization of Congress. They cite the Commemorative Works Act of 1986, which details a multistep process for authorizing and designing commemorative works in the District of Columbia and says any such work must be “specifically authorized” by Congress.
But in legal documents, the Trump administration has argued that congressional actions in the 1920s connected to the design of the Arlington Memorial Bridge already give it the legal right to build the arch.
Congress at the time authorized “construction of two tall columns surmounted by statues on Columbia Island,” the administration wrote. “Although those columns have not yet been built, the statutory authority to build them remains.”
The Federal Aviation Administration is also reviewing whether the arch could pose an aerial hazard, an evaluation that it requires for all structures more than 200 feet tall. The arch would sit about a mile from a Pentagon heliport and about two miles from Reagan National Airport, one of the country’s busiest flight hubs.
Donald Trump is slapping his name on as many buildings and public spaces as he can while President. Trump sneakers, Trump watches, Trump coins, Trump Crypto, and Trump Bibles. Sad to think of the Trump fans who emptied their pockets to buy his merch, but it is sadder still to think about how he’s leaving his gaudy mark on the nation’s capital.
You know that he’s torn down the East Wing of the White House and intends to build a massive ballroom there that is bigger than the White House. You know he paved over Jacqueline Kennedy’s Rose Garden on the White House grounds. You know that he’s closing the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years while he reconstructs it, having alienated both audiences and artists.
But then there is the Arch. Trump wants an arch that’s bigger than anything else in the nation.
On Thursday, the stacked Commission on Fine Arts approved Trump’s Big Tasteless Arch. Almost every member of the Commission was selected by Trump, giving him a free hand to build, design, and redesign monumements to himself.
Here is what the Washington Post’s art and culture critic Phillip Kennecott thinks about the Arch. He began by saying in the sub-head: “America fought to defeat fascism. This ‘triumphal arch’ reeks of it.”
He writes:
Donald Trump’s giant victory arch appears to have an official name. Since October, when the president showed preliminary designs for a gigantic arch proposed for a traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery, the monument has been referred to variously as a triumphal arch, the Independence Arch and the Arc de Trump.
The last of these isn’t entirely a joke. When asked whom the arch would honor, Trump said: “Me.”
But renderings of the arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts in advance of its discussion of the project Thursday, refer to it as the Triumphal Arch. And it will be as big as feared — 250 feet high — larger than arches of antiquity, taller even than ghastly monuments to authoritarian triumphalism, including the victory arch in Pyongyang, North Korea.
It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.
The main body of the arch will rise 166 feet from an elevated base. Atop that will be a 60-foot-tall gilded statue that looks like an AI-mash-up of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, resembling in its glittering ostentation the statue atop a victory column in Mexico City erected by the brutal dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910. The design of the arch is a little simpler than some of the more garish proposals Trump floated earlier. Gigantic Corinthian columns have been removed, and there are no longer gilded statues in the niches on the two main supporting legs.
But there is no lack of gilding in other places, including the ornamental relief on the face of the attic, with lettering spelling out “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All,” and on the four sculpted lions that flank the arch. The lions seem to be borrowed from the beloved statues at the entrance to the New York Public Library. Why? Why not.
Trump set his mind on a Roman victory arch after visiting the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the design is a hodgepodge of borrowed elements. The 250-foot height is left over from an earlier idea that the monument would honor the 250th anniversary of American independence, and the phrase “one nation under God” only gained wide currency in the United States during the 1950s, when it was added to the Pledge of Allegiance after pressure from Christian groups. It will technically be in the District of Columbia, but on the southern side of the Potomac River, disrupting the symbolism of Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was part of a grand symbolic design that honored post-Civil War reconciliation.
But the symbolism and the details, and even the size of the monument, matter less than the mere fact that it perverts a fundamentally American idea about war. We have fought them, we have died in them, and we have brought war to too many people who did not deserve our meddling with their politics and sovereignty.
But no matter the cause, no matter how great the victory, we fundamentally honor sacrifice and service. We celebrate the end of wars and the achievement of peace, not victory. Roman victory arches are lovely to look at, but they were primarily political statements, assertions of personal power and propaganda by ambitious men.
When Abraham Lincoln entered war-ravaged Richmond on April 4, 1865, he came with about a dozen sailors. It wasn’t a parade. When asked how the defeated South should be treated, he said, “Let ’em up easy.” In the renderings submitted to the CFA, it is clear that not only will the arch block the view that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery, it will also frame perfect views of Arlington House, the Greek revival mansion on a hill owned by the slaveholding traitor Robert E. Lee.
If this is a victory arch, what victory is being honored?
The question is all the more pressing given the current moment, when the United States is at a stalemate with Iran, which it has brutalized but not defeated. Like the president’s statements about the war, including a ghastly threat to annihilate the entire civilization of Iran, the rhetoric of this arch is all about escalation. The primary element of its design is its colossal scale, as if being big can compensate for being confused.
And so, like Trump’s declarations of victory, this arch is merely loud, not clear or confident. When people die, we say RIP, for the Latin “requiescat in pace,” an old prayer: Rest in peace. The men and women who lie in Arlington have earned that peace, and they deserve our quiet, humble gratitude, not this monstrous monument to power, war and one man’s ego.
Count on America’s bard Bruce Springsteen to rise to the occasion with a new song:
Trump’s brazen appropriation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was shocking. Its board has been bipartisan since its opening more than fifty years ago. Trump fired the board members named by Biden, replaced them with his loyal allies, named himself chairman of the board, then was shocked, shocked, when the board decided to put his name on the Center, now the Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The logo was designed before the vote.
The name-change was disrespectful of President Kennedy and typically self-aggrandizing for Trump.
The Center was first conceived as a “national cultural center” in 1955 during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1964, Congress named the Center as a living tribute to the assassinated President Kennedy, who was a lover of the arts and who helped raise money for the new Center. Only Congress can change its name.
It opened on September 9, 1971, with Leonard Bernstein’s controversial MASS, commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Read its history here. The MASS was both anti-war and anti-establishment and was a mixture of styles and genres.
In Trump’s many years as a resident of New York City, he never showed any interest in the arts.
Two performers who were scheduled to appear at the Kennedy Center recently canceled their appearances. (Many others had previously canceled after Trump’s takeover, including the blockbuster show HAMILTON, which was supposed to run from March 3 to April 26, 2026.)
One was Chuck Redd, a musician, who had been host of the Center’s annual Christmas Eve Jazz Concert for nearly two decades. Redd objected to the name change and canceled his appearance, which canceled the event as well.
Richard Grennell, Trump’s choice to be president of the Center, sent a letter to Redd informing him that the Center would be suing him for $1 million.
Adele M. Stan wrote in The New Republic:
The grounds for the suit aren’t entirely clear. The thing is, the Kennedy Center lost zero dollars due to Redd’s cancellation; it was a free concert. The only people who lost money due to vibrophonist’s protest were Redd and likely the musicians who were scheduled to perform with him. And, of course, one could argue that Redd’s move actually saved the Kennedy Center money, on staff and heating and the like.
But that didn’t stop Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell from either lying about that or displaying ignorance in his letter threatening Redd: “Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support, combined with your last-minute cancellation has cost us considerably,” Grenell wrote to Redd in an undated letter released on December 26. “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
How one has “dismal ticket sales” for a free concert is never explained. However, the Washington Post reports that sales for tickets that cost actual money, such as those for the National Symphony Orchestra or the ballet, have plummeted since Grenell took over the Kennedy Center, reaching their lowest levels since the pandemic.
A second performer who took umbrage at the politicization of the Kennedy Center was a country singer from Mobile, Alabama, named Kristy Lee.
You may or may not have heard of her (count me among the not), but she sure nailed it.
The Daily Beast reported:
The artist who pulled out of a performance at the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump slapped his name on the storied arts institution is being lauded by fans for her decision.
Kristy Lee, a folk singer from Mobile, Alabama, told fans in a statement that she couldn’t “sleep at night” if she went through with her performance at the former John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which was scheduled for Jan. 14.
“When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night,” Lee shared with her 42,000 Facebook followers on Monday.
As of publication, the independent folk singer received nearly 300,000 likes on her Facebook post, compared to her 42,000 followers.
Her cancellation came after the White House announced Thursday that the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts would be renamed to include Trump’s name following a vote by the venue’s board, which is now stacked with MAGA loyalists.
“I won’t lie to you, canceling shows hurts. This is how I keep the lights on,” the independent artist wrote. “But losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck.”
After Lee made headlines for pulling out of the show, she said she was flooded with messages of support—and even monetary donations. The singer later announced she would perform a live show from home in response to the outpouring of love.”I believe in the power of truth, and I believe in the power of people,” Lee wrote on Facebook. Chad Edwards/Courtesy of Kristy Lee/Chad Edwards
“I want to thank everyone who’s reached out, and especially those who sent a surprise Venmo,” she wrote. “That kind of kindness keeps gas in the tank and songs on the road, and I don’t take it lightly.”
A spokesperson for Lee told The Daily Beast that the singer cited “institutional integrity” as her primary reason for canceling her performance at the venue, where ticket sales have reportedly plummeted since Trump’s takeover.
“As an artist, Kristy believes publicly funded cultural spaces must remain free from political capture, self-promotion, or ideological pressure,” the spokesperson said, adding that her decision was not directed at any patrons, staff, or artists at the Center.
“Performing under these circumstances would conflict with the values of artistic freedom, public trust, and constitutional principles that the Kennedy Center was created to uphold.”
Trump set his sights on the Center months ago and has repeatedly suggested, both in speeches and on social media, that it be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center. The board now includes White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, second lady Usha Vance, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Allison Lutnick, the wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
A source told CNN that Trump phoned into Thursday’s board meeting ahead of the vote. A day later, the president’s name was swiftly and conspicuously added to the building, which now reads: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.
Redd and Lee are the latest to cancel. Ticket sales have plummeted since Trump took control of the Kennedy Center in February.
In the weeks after the February board changes, at least 20 productions were canceled or postponed, with names such as comedian and actor Issa Rae pulling out of planned performances at the center, and musical artist Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming saying they were stepping down as artistic advisers.
Descendants of the celebrated painter Norman Rockwell wrote an article in USA Today protesting the Trump administration’s selective use of his work to portray an all-white America. The Department of Homeland Security has issued propaganda that includes Rockwell paintings to illustrate that the U.S. has no racial diversity. Whites only.
His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren wrote this article.
If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color.
The Rockwell family
A group of mostly White Americans stands beneath a billowing national flag, right hands to their hearts. Construction workers crawl ant-like over a close-up of the upraised torch in the hand of the Statue of Liberty. A craggy Daniel Boone in raccoon-skin cap gazes off into the distance against a purple background, cradling his rifle.
These are three Norman Rockwell paintings that recently appeared without authorization in social media posts by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They bore these labels: “Protect our American way of life,” “Manifest Heroism” and a quote from Calvin Coolidge, “Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America.”
Norman Rockwell – our father, grandfather and great-grandfather – painted more than 4,000 works during his career, many of them depicting what are considered classic scenes from 20th century American life: Boy Scouts, doctor visits, squabbling couples, soda shops, soldiers returning from war, linemen and so much more.
From 1916 to 1963, he regularly painted covers for the Saturday Evening Post, which by and large depicted only White people. The scarcity of people of color in Rockwell’s paintings has led those who are not familiar with his entire oeuvre to draw the conclusion that his vision was of a White America, free of immigrants and people of color. But nothing could have been further from the truth.
Norman Rockwell used art to confront racism, injustice in America
Rockwell was profoundly shaken by the injusticestoward Black Americans that were brought to the forefront during the Civil Rights Movement. He felt an urgent need to raise his voice against the racism and injustice he witnessed all around him.Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!
In January of 1964, just one month shy of his 70th birthday, his iconic painting “The Problem We All Live With” appeared in Look magazine. The painting was inspired by the experiences of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old girl who had been escorted by U.S. Marshals to desegregate her New Orleans school in 1960.
The painting focuses on a young Black girl in a white dress walking to school surrounded by unmistakable signs of racism and violence. A horrifying epithet scrawled across a wall dotted by rotten tomatoes recently hurled and the burly bodies of the four U.S. Marshalls accompanying her all point to the horrifying historical moment depicted in the scene. But perhaps most haunting of all is that title: “The Problem We All Live With,” an eternal present tense, inviting us to engage with the ravages of racism in our society, to open our eyes to the injustice and violence.
“I was born a White Protestant with some prejudices that I am continuously trying to eradicate,” Rockwell said in an interview in 1962. “I am angry at unjust prejudices, in other people and in myself.”
His efforts to eradicate prejudices both within himself and others led him to explore issues of racism, violence and segregation well into his 70s: “Golden Rule” (1961), “Murder in Mississippi” (1965) and “New Kids in the Neighborhood (Negro in the Suburbs)” (1967) all demonstrate his deep commitment to equality and anti-racism.
If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would be devastated to see that not only does the problem Ruby Bridges confronted 65 years ago still plague us as a society, but that his own work has been marshalled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color.
We ‒ as his eldest son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren ‒ believe that now is the time to follow in his footsteps and stand for the values he truly wished to share with us and all Americans: compassion, inclusiveness and justice for all.
***********************************
In addition to the contested use of Rockwell’s paintings, the Trump administration’s Department of Labor has used the retro images below as part of its recruitment/branding campaign (slogans like “Make America Skilled Again,” “Build America’s Future,” “American Workers First,” “Your Nation Needs You”). The DOL ran them on social media (USDOL posts on X/Twitter, Facebook and Instagram). The posters present America as an all-white nation of male workers. No diversity. Broad shoulders. Blonde hair. Open-collar. He-men. Red-blooded white American men. No Rosie the Riveter.
Glenn Kessler, recently retired as the Washington Post’s fact checker, has his own blog at Substack. He now dedicates his time to fact-checking Trump’s lies. That’s a full-time job.
He writes about a forgotten episode in Trump’s past that foreshadows his demolition of the East Wing of the White House and his demolition of foreign aid and entire departments:
Donald Trump’s dismantling of parts of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a gargantuan $250 million ballroom — without any forethought or architectural approvals — has been cited by critics as a metaphor for what he is doing to American democracy.
To me, Trump’s second-term approach to governing has its roots in a similarly shocking display of developer hubris — his destruction, 45 years ago, of the Bonwit Teller limestone bas-relief sculptures of two nearly naked women to make way for Trump Tower.
After Trump, 33 at the time, purchased the bankrupt retailer’s 11-story building, he promised to donate the 15-foot-high Art Deco sculptures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also agreed to donate a six-by-nine-meter, geometric-patterned bronze latticework that hung over the entrance.
But then one day, he woke up and decided he would break his promise.
He ordered crews to separate the architectural treasures from the walls with jackhammers and break them off with crowbars. The friezes, located near the top of the building, were thrown down by workers, shattering them to bits. The latticework was removed with blow torches and mysteriously went missing.
By the time New Yorkers realized what was happening, the deed was done — and that was that.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the Bonwit Teller friezes when the U.S. Agency for International Development — a lifeline for many countries in the Global South — was dismantled earlier this year in the blink of an eye.
Trump knew that by the time the lawsuits wended their way through the courts, it would be too late to rebuild USAID, Voice of America and so many other agencies that he’s destroyed.
They’ve been broken down into a million pieces, just like the Bonwit Teller sculptures.
In 1980, The New York Times put the news of Trump’s betrayal on the front page, under the headline: “Developer Scraps Bonwit Sculptures.” (Trump was not yet famous.)
The story has all the earmarks of a classic Trump tale.
First, the shock: “The destruction of the Art Deco panels stunned some art appraisers and elicited expressions of surprise and disappointment from officials of the Met, where they were to have been installed by the department of 20th-century art. One appraiser placed their value at several hundred thousand dollars.”
Then the spin: “John Baron, a vice president of the Trump Organization, said after the demolition yesterday that the company had decided not to preserve the sculptures because ‘the merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the effort to save them.’ Mr. Baron said the company had got three independent appraisals of the sculptures. These, he said, had found them to be ‘without artistic merit’ and worth less than $9,000 in ‘resale value.’ He said it would have cost $32,000 to remove them carefully and would have delayed demolition work by a week and a half and perhaps longer because of the need for cranes and municipal permits.”
We now know that “Baron” was none other than Trump himself — and that the numbers and appraisals were entirely fabricated.
Next, the shock at the spin: Ashton Hawkins, vice president and secretary of the Met’s board of trustees, was flabbergasted by the claims. “Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit?” he asked.
Preservation News reported that Robert Miller, an art dealer with a gallery across from Bonwit Teller, estimated the sculptures were worth $200,000 —or $800,000 in today’s dollars — and that “they could have been safely removed in little time.”
Finally, the Trump double-down: After days of controversy, Trump stopped hiding behind his faux spokesman and offered reporters an even more ridiculous figure. He asserted removal of the sculptures would have cost more than $500,000 in taxes, demolition delays and other expenses. The figure, conveniently, was higher than the reported valuation of the sculptures in news reports.
On top of that, Trump claimed he was motivated by his concern for “the safety of people on the street below…If one of those stones had slipped, people could have been killed. To me, it would not have been worth that kind of risk.”
Somehow, that concern didn’t apply when workers were ordered to hurl the frieze fragments down from the eleventh floor.
Almost half a century has passed. We’re still watching the same movie.
Here is a Sunday special by one of my favorite writers, Greg Olear.
Please open and read to the end. He takes the topic and relates it to the present moment, when many of us fear that our republic is in mortal danger, as fascism swirls around us.
He writes:
Dear Reader,
A Shropshire Lad is a collection of 63 short poems, written in London by a classics scholar who had never once been to Shropshire, involving young men living, working, drinking, wooing, ruing, philosophizing, and dying in the British countryside. The narrator of most of the poems, the titular “lad of Shropshire,” is called Terence, who sometimes is, and sometimes is not, a stand-in for the actual author, A.E. Housman.
The book was published in 1896, when Housman was 37 years old, and did not exactly fly off the shelves. But many of the poems touch on the theme of mortality—particularly, of young men dying before their time—and therefore sales picked up during the Boer War and, especially, the Great War.
A number of the Shropshire poems have been set to music; there are almost 50 different songs that use “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” for lyrics.
Between their simple earnestness, melancholy bent, and wide literary renown, the poems lend themselves well to parody. You can get the gist of the entire collection from a few of the short spoofs. Pre-fascist Ezra Pound wrote a nice one, in 1911:
O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon.
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.
Hugh Kingsmill trod this same ground in 1920:
What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
I cannot track down the full text, but “Loveliest of cheese, the Cheddar now,” by the pseudonymous Terence Beersay, made me chortle. Even Dorothy Parker, no comic slouch, took a whack at Housman:
I never see that prettiest thing—
A cherry bough gone white with Spring—
But what I think, “How gay t’would be
To hang me from a flowering tree.”
Housman claimed not to find any of the Shropshire parodies funny, which seems to me unlikely—although, being an academic who devoted most of his intellectual energy to Latin poetical scholarship, he wasn’t exactly Robin Williams with the jokes. From what I can gather, he was something of a fusspot.
But he was able to laugh at himself, or at least to recognize the prevailing darkness of his signature work. The penultimate poem in A Shropshire Lad, “Terence, This is Stupid Stuff,” attacks this head-on—as if Housman knows what the critics would say, and hits them with a preemptive strike. The text is a dialogue between Terence, who writes the depressing poems, and one of his friends, who is forced to read the depressing poems. Housman never tells us where they are when this exchange takes place, but I imagine them sitting at a pub, when, after a few pints of liquid courage, the friend offers some brutally honest criticism:
‘Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ‘tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ‘tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ‘tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’
(The bit about the cow is a reference to lyrics of a song popular in Housman’s day, and thus made more sense in 1896. )
His buddy is saying, basically, “Dude, why so pouty? No one wants to read this depressing shit. I know you’re not really this much of a downer, because I see how you knock down the pints of ale. Maybe try writing something upbeat, that we can dance to.”
And Terence replies:
Why, if ‘tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Burton-on-Trent is the brewing capital of Britain—like referencing Milwaukee or Latrobe, PA or Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri. The “peers” he refers to next include, according to the footnote at The Housman Society, “Michael Arthur Bass, baron (1886) and Edward Cecil Guiness, baron (1891):”
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And this alliterative couplet, comparing one of the greatest of British poets to beer, is chef’s kiss:
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
But for all the magical powers of alcohol to improve our mood, drunkenness does not make the pain go away—not really:
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ‘tis pleasant till ‘tis past:
The mischief is that ‘twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
The world is full of woe and rue, you see, and we are wise to prepare ourselves for the bad stuff that’s coming down the pike, not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Poetry helps accomplish this more effectively than pints of Bass or Guiness:
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day….
In the fall of 2025—which, at the rate we’re going, might also wind up being the fall of the Republic—this strikes me as sound advice. Too many Americans are sleepwalking through the Trump horrors, and while this “antiwokeness” might keep them docile, it will not protect them from what’s coming. The newsfeed, meanwhile, is so toxic that we risk succumbing to its fascist poison. We must make like Mithradates and take it all in small doses….
Do read it all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 