Strip both names from it, for neither merits the honour: a reflection upon the ‘Trump–Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’

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{WP 19 December} ‘Kennedy Center adds Trump’s name to building, despite legal concerns’

The Trump–Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: I confess I indulged in no small measure of sentimental reverence for the Kennedy dynasty over many years, but it is time—well past time, in truth—for such nostalgia to be laid to rest. Howsoever towering John F. Kennedy may appear when set beside the present holder of the office—and I do freely acknowledge his true heroism in war—we must at last reckon with the full measure of the man: he was corrupt; his fumbling hand brought the United States perilously close to the brink of a third world war (albeit he was not the architect of that crisis); and he behaved appallingly toward Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, toward Marilyn Monroe, and toward Heaven knoweth how many other women.

The dynasty’s moral deficiencies did not begin nor end with him. Joseph Kennedy, the family patriarch, held an admiration for Hitler. Ted Kennedy, lionised by many, bore responsibility for a woman’s death. And today we behold Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dragging American public health discourse back unto the intellectual standard of the colonial age—an erstwhile advanced medical system now obliged to genuflect before a man whose understanding is, at best, mediæval.

For generations there hath existed an almost tribal fealty toward the Kennedys within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, most especially among the predominantly Irish Catholic working class. Yet these have never been my people. As a nominal Protestant of largely English and German descent, I understood from childhood—keenly and unforgettably—that I did not belong, nor was I welcome, within my overwhelmingly Catholic community situated scarcely ten miles north of Boston. (Think somewhere in the vicinity of Spot Pond). It was no phantom of my imagination; I was told so in the plainest, most wounding terms on countless occasions—most vehemently by the Irish kids, and, to a lesser but still palpable degree, by the Italian ones. Why, then, have I spent so many years idealising the Kennedys, a clan whose mythology I was never invited to share? Only Jacqueline ever embodied genuine grace or dignity.

So let us say it plainly: enough of the Kennedys, and curse the cult built around them. And as for Trump—his name, and that of his brood, deserveth no sanctified place in the public square. Strip both names from the façade. We are not the Soviet Union, and no civilised republic ought to plaster the monuments of its cultural life with the surnames of dubious dynasties.

—Arthur Newhook (pen name), somewhere in the vicinity of the Middlesex Fells and severely pissed-off, 19 December 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.