Boycott the Kennedy Center

Art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.

— John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States

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Photo credit: Hamiltonmusical.com/Getty Images

Donald Trump has completed his takeover of the Kennedy Center by continuing to merge the American government and Fox News. His final selections to the board of directors are the rancid bigot Laura Ingraham and the conspiracy nut Maria Bartiromo.

This is how Laura Ingraham’s own brother describes his sister:

I think she’s a monster. She’s very smart, she’s well-spoken, but her emotional heart is just kind of dead.

He has also posted this, alongside this video of his sister:

Our father was a Nazi sympathizer, racist, anti-Semite and homophobe. Like father like daughter?

As for Maria Bartiromo, here is just one sample of her insanity and election fraud conspiracies:

The Kennedy Center is a national jewel that has been desecrated by Trump and MAGA, who have sought to turn it into a wholly-owned subsidiary of their wretched political cause. That cause preaches a message of intolerance, division and jingoism that stands opposed to America’s values, and John Kennedy’s titanic vision for humanity.

The MAGA board of the Kennedy Center is a cheap joke, led by a low man with no grace, class or dignity.

What Trump has accomplished is the desecration and politicization of a national treasure, and there must be a response.

Here is what Jeffrey Seller, the producer of “Hamilton,” said when announcing the production would not perform at the Kennedy Center. This would have absolutely delighted President Kennedy:

In recent weeks we have sadly seen decades of Kennedy Center neutrality be destroyed. The recent purge by the Trump Administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center flies in the face of everything this national cultural center represents. This spirit of nonpartisanship ended on February 7, 2025, with the firing of Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, the Chairman of the Board David Rubenstein, numerous other Kennedy Center board members, and the cancellation of important programming. These actions bring a new spirit of partisanship to the national treasure that is the Kennedy Center.

Given these recent actions, our show simply cannot, in good conscience, participate and be a part of this new culture that is being imposed on the Kennedy Center. Therefore, we have cancelled the third engagement of Hamilton at the Kennedy Center, originally scheduled for March 3-April 26, 2026.

Hamilton is a large and global production, and it would simply be financially and personally devastating to the hundreds of employees of Hamilton if the new leadership of the Kennedy Center suddenly cancelled or re-negotiated our engagement. The actions of the new Chairman of the Board in recent weeks demonstrate that contracts and previous agreements simply cannot be trusted. This is sad, because basic integrity and the rule of law have long been great American principles that help serve as a foundation for our Nation.”

Here is what President Kennedy said about the role of the artist in a free society in a speech delivered at Amherst College on October 26, 1963. These words must be the basis to boycott the institution that carries his name, so long as the arts and America are under siege by a fascist:

When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.

When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.

The great artist is thus a solitary figure.

He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time.

This is not a popular role….

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style.

In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology.

Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.

In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.

And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.

Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s hired man. What he is doing is tearing down the temples of peace built and preserved by men like John Kennedy, who knew the horror of war, and had the wisdom to maintain the peace in the most dangerous hours that humanity has ever faced.

Do you know who was a master dealmaker?

John Kennedy.

He saved the world from Armageddon at its brink, by making sure the enemies of freedom did not doubt our resolve to preserve it.

John Kennedy was murdered at age 46, and these are the last undelivered words of his last undelivered speech in Dallas:

For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do.

Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed., to all mankind.

Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.

So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation's future is at stake.

Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause--united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future--and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.

Should this not be the message of the Democratic Party, and shouldn’t it be our national cause? Certainly, it is what I believe.

For now, those beliefs are under direct attack by an American monster, who took power with a case that he argued against America’s moral compass and the idea that we are destined to build “the shining city upon a hill” that is a beacon for all mankind.

Donald Trump has called for America to become great by annihilating what made us so. We are living in a moment of crisis brought on by the disease of Donald Trump. There have been many men like him through history, and they bring disaster. They are the fire that roars before renewal. They are the wellspring of evil and chaos, and they exist in perpetuity.

Americans were naive to believe such a man could not rise to power here in this land, but rise he has. A disease that has spread misery around the world has arrived here. Trump is America’s political and moral Ebola.

Opposing this disease and searching for a cure is now at the heart of American life. There is no question more important than this.

There is no doubt that the Kennedy Center must be boycotted and kept in the dark.

Let the curtain rise again when artists are able to perform free from the heavy hand of the Kennedy Center chairman, who does not believe in freedom, democracy, or anything that John Kennedy did.

Let him and his board of bigots and Usha Vance sit together in the dark, and sing The Village People songs together.

No true artist and no real patriot will step foot in the occupied Kennedy Center until the American people fumigate the disease in our land, and restore dignity to the presidency and respect for the arts.

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