By Becket Adams
Sunday, June 15, 2025
President Trump’s presence at the Kennedy Center last
week was met with both cheers
and jeers.
This represented a regrettable state of affairs,
according to Peter Baker, the chief White House
correspondent for the New York Times.
“For those of us born and raised in the Washington area,”
he
lamented, “the Kennedy Center was always a place to escape politics and
enjoy some music or theater. Now it’s been turned into just one more venue for
the polarization of the current era.”
This is called “reaping.”
Many of us on the right have been pleading — begging! —
for the politically obsessed to spare a few areas of modern life from their
all-consuming passion. Those of us who learned early in childhood how to
separate the art from the artists have prayed for those fixated on the Life
Political to just once, or maybe twice, take a break so that the rest of us may
enjoy our entertainment and edification in relative peace.
The politically obsessed responded with a resounding,
gleeful no.
Over the past 20 years, everything from knitting to birding to The Bachelorette has been swallowed up by the
insatiable monster birthed and nursed to maturity by partisan psychotics. Lady
Gaga was condemned in 2017 for not incorporating an overtly
anti-Trump message into her Super Bowl performance. The actress Sydney Sweeney issued a defensive statement in 2022,
rallying to her family’s support after critics attacked them for showing up to
her mother’s birthday party in MAGA-style hats that read “Make Sixty Great
Again.” The phrase “Taylor Swift’s silence is deafening,” which arose from the
songwriter’s previous reluctance to weigh in on hot-button issues, is now a
trope because the act of bullying artists into supporting political causes has
become so predictable.
Now, the president’s mere attendance at a show at the
Kennedy Center elicits equal parts applause and boos. This is the inevitable
result of our current cultural hyper-obsession with politics. There’s plenty of
blame to go around, including a portion to the New York Times, which has
acted during this “current era” as a megaphone for irritating activists and
busybodies.
The New York Times is the same publication that,
in 2018, gave credence to the ludicrous bit of online trolling that alleged a
link between milk and white supremacy. This is a real headline: “Why White
Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed).” The Times
is also responsible for pushing the ridiculous conspiracy theory that said
the “okay” hand gesture is a secret symbol within white
supremacy culture, and not, in fact, another online gag meant to inspire moral
panic in newsrooms precisely like the Times. More recently, the Times
has supported the pitiful attempt to politicize and render verboten the
Appeal to Heaven flag, which, right up until the paper’s reporting, held no
controversial double meaning. The flag flew outside San Francisco City Hall
until the Times joined the broader effort to slime Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito as a closet white supremacist and insurrectionist, using the
Appeal to Heaven flag seen outside his beach home as “evidence” of such
leanings.
In its decades-long effort to politicize all facets of
life, the New York Times has spared no subject from the
hyper-progressive, racialized lens. Yes, that includes the arts. “Country music
struggles to meet the moment. Again,” the Times reported in 2020, its
subhead adding, “The larger music industry has vowed to examine racism and
bias. In Nashville, only the genre’s outsiders are dipping their toes in
essential conversations.”
The Times is deciding which conversations are
“essential” now?
I haven’t even touched on the paper’s award-winning work
of (unintentional) historical fiction, the 1619 Project.
It is only now, though, when there are boos and cheers in
the Kennedy Center in response to a political presence, that the Times’
chief White House correspondent seems to notice the overt politicizing of
everything. He should try reading his own newspaper occasionally.
If he did, he would learn that the Kennedy Center is not
quite the “place to escape politics and enjoy some music or theater.”
Just a casual perusal through the Times would
reveal that this supposed respite from the outside world, whose board formerly
included Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett and former Obama national security
adviser Susan Rice, is also the same place where Vice President JD Vance and
his wife were booed in March when they attended a National Symphony concert of
music by Shostakovich and Stravinsky.
Baker would also learn about the tricky nature of Trump’s
attendance at the Kennedy Center and the damned-if-he-does and
damned-if-he-doesn’t nature of the situation. Recall that the New York Times
did an entire piece in 2017 worrying about Trump’s decision to skip the Kennedy
Center Honors, suggesting his actions would rob the organization’s awards
ceremony of its “luster” should future presidents likewise skip the event.
Baker would also learn about the recent Kennedy Center honorees and award
recipients who boycotted or skipped Trump administration–related events because
of their opposition to his remarks or policies.
It’s a conundrum: As president, Trump is, of course,
inherently a political figure. It’s also true that everywhere he goes, outside of
the White House or a political rally, he encounters people who detest him,
including those empowered and encouraged by organizations such as the New
York Times or celebrities such as the Kennedy Center honorees.
Trump’s a deeply controversial political force. He loves
politicization. So do his critics.
If you don’t like the reaping, maybe reconsider what
you’ve been sowing.
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