On October 26, 1963, just four weeks before his assassination, John F. Kennedy went to Amherst College to pay tribute to the American poet. Robert Frostwho read “The Gift Directly” at Kennedy's inauguration, died earlier that year at the age of eighty-eight. Now the college was dedicating a library in his name. Kennedy arrived in Amherst by helicopter and, in front of an audience of students and scholars, paid tribute to the role of the independent artist in society and to Frost himself, “one of the granite figures of our time in America.”
“When power leads a man to arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations,” Kennedy said. “When power narrows the sphere of man's interests, poetry reminds him of the richness and variety of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry purifies. For art establishes the basic human truth, which should serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
The rhetoric and pacing of the speech, composed by historian and Kennedy confidant Arthur Schlesinger Jr., is stilted and largely appropriate for its era. IN “Kennedy's conclusionHarry Wills was particularly scathing about the New Frontiersmen and their polite self-image, their determination to leave behind what they saw as the cultural apathy and squalor of Eisenhower-era suburbia. The Kennedy circle, “the best and the brightest,” as David Halberstam would call it, vibrated with Ivy League self-esteem. Schlesinger recalled the early days of an administration in which “Washington seemed engaged in a collective effort to become brighter, more cheerful, more intelligent. . . . Life seemed to flash by as if in review as you met Harvard classmates, wartime comrades, faces seen after the war at ADA conventions.” Kennedy's language on the podium at Amherst would have been unimaginable in the mouth of any modern political speaker – say, Barack Obama – not because Obama is incapable of Kennedy's complexity, but rather because he knows what he will say past his audience is as long as he spoke To their.
But alongside the blatant elitism of Kennedy's style, his administration made serious efforts to emphasize the value of art. Kennedy was invited Pablo Casals to the White House, where he played Schumann, Mendelssohn and Couperin in the East Room. American Ballet Theater presented “Billy the Kid.” The Paul Winter Sextet performed “Saudade da Bahia”. Andre Malraux came to dinner. It was at a reception for forty-nine Nobel laureates that Kennedy famously remarked, “I think this is the most remarkable collection of talent and human knowledge that has ever been assembled in the White House, except perhaps when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Since Eisenhower, there have been bipartisan attempts to build a national cultural center in Washington, DC. After Kennedy's assassination, LBJ renamed the center a living memorial to John F. Kennedy. When it opened in September 1971, Leonard Bernstein his “Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Actors and Dancers” premiered, and Judith Jamieson from Alvin Ailey Companycompleted.
This week, thanks to the self-centered efforts of the current president and his obedient subordinates and friends, the place was renamed the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The center's board, now filled with loyalists such as Maria Bartiromo and Fox News' Laura Ingraham, made the big decision at the Palm Beach mansion of casino magnate Steve Wynn, whose wife Andrea sits on the board. When Trump, who had been widely hinting at tributes online for months, heard the news, he feigned gratitude and shock. “It surprised me,” he said, easily fibbing. The board insisted the vote was unanimous, but one Democrat who had not yet been kicked out, Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, said she called into the meeting but was silenced. “Everything was cut off,” she told Sean McCreesh about Time“And they immediately said: “Well, unanimously. Everyone is in favor.” Various members of the Kennedy family (but not the Secretary of Health and Human Services) expressed their sadness. Maria Shriver, John Kennedy's niece, called the move “incomprehensible.” But, with respect, is this really beyond comprehension?
This week, the president and his administration managed to display a dizzying array of their most outstanding qualities. First came Trump's cruelty. comments about the grisly murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner. What followed were chaotic revelations from his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who told the writer in no fewer than eleven interviews Vanity Fair that the vice president was a “conspiracy theorist” and the president was an “alcoholic.” Her indiscretion occurred against the backdrop of closed-door White House meetings (Wake up, Mr. President!) and Trump's rants about the economy, in which he frantically assured citizens that things were going great: “Wow, we're making progress!” Trump's thunderous statements smacked of desperation. As his popularity has fallen, many voters who might once have excused his myriad character flaws as the dirty price to be paid for his supposed virtues now seem to be asking, “What is wrong with this person?
