The Kennedy Center at night. (Credit: Aude via Wikimedia Commons)
As I tally the growing list of artists who have scraped Trump off their shoes by exiting the MAGA Kennedy Center — the latest refugees are Nashville banjoist Bela Fleck and the entire Washington National Opera — I can’t help but recall, from my reading of history, that so many entertainers took the opposite tack when the Nazis goose-stepped into Paris early in World War II.
It may seem obvious to us that artists should be among the first to condemn fascism by word or deed, and rest assured that those who’ve canceled on the Kennedy Center have no regrets - especially given what’s been happening in Minnesota (RIP, Renee Good) and what likely awaits us this year (more Renee Goods). But it does take a certain amount of fortitude to forfeit income by taking a stand. And what these artists have done feels even more laudable when contrasted with what so many of their French counterparts did (or, more precisely, failed to do) during the Occupation.
Major players like singer Maurice Chevalier, playwright Jean Cocteau, and actor Sacha Guitry performed for the Nazis and partied with the Nazis and basically rationalized their behavior by insisting that they were merely trying to boost citizens’ spirits. Serge Lifar, who headed the Opera ballet, stayed in his post for that ostensible reason. The collaborationist film actress known as Arletty, who had a wartime affair with a Nazi officer, went one step further: “My heart is French, but my ass is international!”
These excuses didn’t sit well with Alan Riding, author of And Show Went on, his 2011 book about artists in occupied Paris. At the time of publication, he said in an interview that “cultural celebrities have special responsibilities in times of trouble, just as they enjoy special privileges during the good times. Why should that be asked of them since they are likely to be as brave or cowardly as anyone else? The reason is that in many countries…people expect artists and writers to be more thoughtful, perhaps more intelligent, probably more independent than the rest of us. If someone is famous for possessing some creative or artistic talent, he or she is somehow regarded as spiritually superior. Even in the U.S., where the notion of the ‘intellectual’ is viewed with suspicion, public opinion is open to be swayed today by famous actors or pop singers who take public positions.”
All the more reason, today, why we should applaud the Kennedy Center dropouts who’ve shouldered those special responsibilities - people like Alabama folk singer Kristy Lee (“When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep at night”); like Doug Varone and Dancers (“With the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution”); and the Cookers jazz band (“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice”).
Trump’s flunkies at the Center have predictably imploded. Rick Grenell, who’s running the place (into the ground) says that the exiting artists have “derangement syndrome.” When Bela Fleck (43 Grammy nominations, 18 wins) pulled out the other day, canceling three scheduled shows, Grenell addressed him in a post on Elon Musk’s X: “You caved to the woke mob who wants you to perform for only Lefties. This mob pressuring you will never be happy until you only play for Democrats.” Fleck responded in the press: “The reaction of Richard Grenell is exactly what I’m talking about. That’s what I don’t want to be a part of.”
Nor does Wayne Tucker, Brentano Quartet with Hsin-Yun Huang, Magpie, Maria João Pires, Marc-André Hamelin, comedy show Asian AF, the touring production of Hamilton, Chuck Redd, Stephen Schwartz, Issa Rae, Rhiannon Giddens, Balún, or mystery writer Louise Penny (who said that her Center book launch “was going to be a career highlight, but there are things far more important than that”). Nor does Shonda Rhimes, who resigned from the Center’s board of trustees, wish to be associated with the MAGAts. Nor do Ben Folds and Renée Fleming, who quit as artistic advisors.
None of these people want to be totalitarian play toys; none of them want to be window dressing for a fascistic vulgarian who’s slashing the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
(A quick word about Richard Grenell, the Center boss who says these artists are deranged. I remember this guy. Back in 2015, when terrorists staged a bloody attack on a Paris magazine office, Fox News talking head Grenell offered this wisdom on the air: “Remember, Hillary wants you to empathize with these people.”)
In dire times like ours, the first duty of any artist is to take a stand through art. Michael Jochum, a drummer and percussionist who has toured and recorded with Jackson Browne (among others), is not a Kennedy Center refugee. But on social media he’s trying to buck up any wavering artists and perhaps even educate politically illiterate voters:
“What we are witnessing now is not simply a political disagreement. It is the normalization of moral collapse…It is exhausting. It is corrosive. And it is the inevitable psychological consequence of watching one’s nation be methodically hollowed out by men who have no relationship with truth, no respect for history, and no capacity for shame…History will record this moment with brutal clarity. Long after the slogans rot, what will remain is the simple accounting of who stood up, who stayed silent, and who actively helped drag the country into the mud. This is the test of our time. And far too many are failing it.”
One failed soul was Hendrik Hoefgen, a compliant German actor in the 1981 film Mephisto. The movie takes place during World War II; Hoefgen’s character was based on a real actor who caved to the Nazis. What Hoefgen finally realizes, late in the film, is that every time he debases himself, his patrons thirst for more. He plaintively cried, “What do they want from me now?!”
They want it all, from all of us. That’s what fascists do. Kudos to the Kennedy Center rebels for saying no.
