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Alpaca Suitcase's avatar

Grenell: “The Arts are for everyone - not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with.”

Yeah, Lin, if you wanted to pick and choose who gets Art, you should have become a fascist dictator.

Trump: “So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things.”

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rawrtigerlily's avatar

“The arts are for everyone”

…until we decide otherwise.

…and not all art is allowed because some of it makes us feel icky!

Yeah I’m sure the people determined to dismantle the civil rights of wide swaths of Americans are going to let the newly established second class citizens keep coming to the “whites only” theater. :P

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Pope Buck I's avatar

There will be an upper balcony for the "colored," like in "To Kill A Mockingbird."

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Biff52, Two Weeks!'s avatar

Maybe they could host an art exhibit, featuring the works of Robert Mapplethorpe?

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Alpaca Suitcase's avatar

Some ort is more equal than other ort.

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Pope Buck I's avatar

The new management of the Kennedy Center are responding by creating their own new musical, about Warren G. Harding.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

Whom we can now look back on and say, "He could have been a lot worse."

I was happier when Warren was The Example of Corruption in the White House.

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Pope Buck I's avatar

I mean, at this point he's even making James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson look good by comparison.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

Yes, but I believe I will always blame Johnson for the issues we still have today, because of that damned blanket pardon he gave the traitors. I can understand why he did it, because he was a "southern sympathizer," but I still blame him.

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Stuart's avatar

Don't forget that in 1865 the rank-and-file Yankees were tired of strife. They just wanted the conflict to be over. So, they made a lot of foolish concessions to the Rebels.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

They did, but I do not forgive that blanket pardon, because it causes damage even today.

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Robert Eckert's avatar

Buchanan may not have handled the secession crisis well, but at least he never invited Confederates to sack the Capitol building.

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Nae Kings!'s avatar

Needs more dysentery

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Biff52, Two Weeks!'s avatar

I thought McKinley was their latest fave?

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Aunt Robyn's avatar

"Old Hickory!" would have more showstopping numbers.

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Tina Stein's avatar

The Hispanic Heritage Foundation has also pulled out of its yearly function.

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Lawyers, Guns 'n' Money's avatar

I'm not too excited to visit the Kennedy Center to watch Ted Nugent play his greatest hit.

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This Woman Votes's avatar

The absolute gall of these whiny MAGA snowflakes to call Hamilton “intolerant” for refusing to be the entertainment wing of their Third Reich cosplay party is chef’s kiss perfection. Oh no, a diverse, anti-authoritarian, historically intelligent production doesn’t want to share a stage with your craven little fascist cosplay of “patriotism”? Cry harder, you goose-stepping, art-hating philistines.

Hamilton isn’t “canceling” the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center, under Trump’s tiny, grasping, money-laundering fingers, canceled itself. This was once a bipartisan cultural institution, and then Trump did to it what he does to everything he touches: he corrupted it, gutted it, and filled it with ass-kissing flunkies whose entire personality is licking his boots clean of KFC grease.

And Ric Grenell? The self-loathing, sycophantic, loyalty-above-talent court jester of the Trump regime? The guy so universally despised that Germany openly laughed when he left his ambassador post? The man who has chosen to be the gay face of an administration that actively hates him? He’s out here losing his mind because Hamilton decided they weren’t going to let his new boss treat them like puppets at a fascist dinner theater.

“But but but the arts are for everyone!” he wails, tears streaming down his face, stomping his tiny feet. Yes, Ric, the arts are for everyone, except for people who openly want to destroy them, silence dissent, and replace them with some Todd Starnes-penned MAGA musical about the Founding Fathers shooting wokeness in the face.

And let’s just be honest—are Republicans even into Hamilton? The only thing they liked about America’s founding was the part where rich white men had all the power, and slavery was still in full swing. I guarantee you there’s not a single MAGA grandpa who would sit through an entire performance without muttering about how “this rap music isn’t real music” or whining that the Founding Fathers should have been played by “real Americans,” meaning pasty descendants of inbred Confederate ghosts.

The truth is that Republicans don’t want art. They don’t value culture. They want propaganda. They want a Kennedy Center that will put on a 17-week Kid Rock residency, not a critically acclaimed musical that educates, inspires, and highlights actual America—not the whitewashed Fox News version they keep in their heads.

So no, Hamilton won’t be performing in Stupid Hitler’s Nazi Playhouse. And if that makes you sad? Too bad. Maybe you can replace it with a dramatic reading of Trump’s tweets, performed by a line of screeching bald eagles and a choir of AR-15s going off in unison. That’s about the level of “culture” these people actually want.

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Del's avatar

Evan, your newfound joy over finally seeing Hamilton has been a delight to me these past few days, and delight is hard to come by right now, so thank you for that. Now I’m off to put on my old “Eat. Sleep. Hamilton. Repeat.” T-shirt and follow those instructions like it’s 2015 all over again ❤️

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marcus816's avatar

Christopher Jackson will be reprising his role as Hamilton’s George Washington in town tonight, also performing selections from Lion King and In The Heights. If I had been a lot smarter I would be attending but I didn’t get tickets soon enough (dumbass).

Anyway, delighted he’s going to be here. Deep respect for him and everyone involved in Hamilton.

The show must go on! (Just not for Trump.)

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J Frechette's avatar

Snotty lovers of the arts don't understand that MAGA will make the Kennedy Center greater than ever by transforming it into Branson north with continuous performances of I'm Proud to Be an American: The Lee Greenwood Story.

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Andra Watkins's avatar

I'll have to tell you my Hamilton story someday.

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Annalee Tudor's avatar

I must be the only person in the US who hasn’t seen Hamilton. But I own the remix CD and play it constantly.

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TWal327's avatar

I haven't seen it either and one of my friend's sons is even a member of the cast in the Chicago, Broadway and Australian productions. Shame on me. I really want to see it next time it's here.

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Annalee Tudor's avatar

Yeah I will try to see it the next time it’s nearby.

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Birb-General of the US's avatar

𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘰𝘯 could sell out the house during the peak of March Madness and a natural disaster occurring at the same time.

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E2's avatar

I'm pretty sure Republicans were in the room for every performance of Hamilton, before that identity was subsumed by Trumpism.

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Erin's avatar

They made a few pointed comments at Mike Pence from the stage, no less

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E2's avatar
Mar 7Edited

Yes, though I was thinking mainly of ordinary-folks Republicans. The Founding Fathers used to be pretty well received in normal-conservative circles. There are conservative essays arguing against associating Hamilton with modern progressivism (see the following from the Heritage Foundation, after the musical's debut, and before the rise of Trump).

https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/alexander-hamilton-and-american-progressivism

The idea of modern multicultural America finding roots and purpose in those days, and in Hamilton's story, was, at least briefly, understood as a unifying patriotic message.

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Stuart's avatar

“They can’t be in the same room with Republicans.”

What's the matter with that?

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Mike Wears Shorts's avatar

Republicans won't ever address an argument without rephrasing it, attempting to make the other look stupid. Dumbfucks

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Elizabeth Fenlon's avatar

Bravo!

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Bree Rothbart's avatar

There is an actual musical about Andrew Jackson, called BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON. It’s pretty good, especially if you like emo-influenced pop punk.

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