National Airport, Washington's close-in facility, initially designed to serve members of Congress who needed quick access for their trips back home to attend to their constituencies, was renamed Ronald Reagan Airport in honor of the two-term Republican President. former actor, victim of an assassination attempt, and the man who was at least partially responsible for the coming down of the Berlin Wall and the swan song of the Soviet Union.
The name of BWI (Baltimore Washington International) airport was changed to Thurgood Marshall Airport in honor of the first black Supreme Court justice, longtime advocate for civil rights, and a tireless supporter of an equitable society.
The Houston Manned Space Center was changed to the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center to honor the United States president. Maury Hall at the Naval Academy, named after a Confederate loyalist, was changed to Carter Hall to honor the former American president and Annapolis graduate.
The J. Edgar Hoover FBI building will be changed to honor an American without Hoover's questionable racist past and quasi-governmental doings.
Just about every professional football stadium in America has been renamed to reflect its corporate sponsorship. Three Rivers Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers and named after its location at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers is now Gillette Stadium after the well-known razor company. Los Angeles Coliseum, a historical landmark in Southern California was renamed after the company SoFi. AT&T and Bank of America Stadium are but two more of many.
The names of half of Yale residential colleges have been changed to remove those of founders who had any association with slavery and replaced with people of color and women; and once the university's historical record has been thoroughly researched, the other half will soon go. Since slavery was common in the 18th and 19th centuries, most of the wealthy, influential Americans honored by Yale had at least some association with it, either directly or through shipbuilding, the Three Cornered Trade, or Wall Street investment in transatlantic slave shipping.
During the Biden years, army bases named for Confederate generals were changed to something more suitable. The name of any public institution, avenue, or thoroughfare named for a Confederate was removed and replaced with either a victim of Southern slavery, or a hero in the fight for black liberation. Everything from Congressional office buildings to Northern Virginia schools and streets were changed in a revisionist attempt to expunge the last traces of slavery from the historical record.
Why, then, was Donald Trump's addition to his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts the abominable, outrageous act claimed by the Left? Only because of unmitigated hatred of the man, an assumption that he intends to retain power ad infinitum, replace democracy with his kingship, and run roughshod over every hallowed American institution and remake it in his image.
And of course because he changed the name, not Americans honoring him after his death as has been the case for other presidential renaming. The Left, however, sees no irony or hypocrisy in their claim. What is the difference, say historians who have seen names changed to reflect changing regimes, courts, governments, and investors for centuries? Given the political motivation behind all renaming, whether done by men in office or after the fact, there should be no moral questions raised. Politics is a venal business.
And no on doubts that if a Democrat is elected after Donald Trump, he or she will sign an executive order to change the name back to Kennedy within the first few days in office,
Anyone following the rise of Trump and the course of his two presidencies knows that such acts have as much to do with enraging progressive opponents as it is self-glorification. He knows that every outrageous, ad hominem, reference - 'You are stupid', he recently said to a White House reporter - will drive Democrats to distraction. His handy, off-the-cuff characterizations of Biden (Sleepy Joe), Elizabeth Warren (Pocahontas) Chuck Schumer and foreign leaders and the their countries, are not only hilarious and accurate, but against the woke canon.
He is no different that the tummlers of the Borscht Belt - Henny Youngman, Jackie Mason, Rodney Dangerfield, and others - whose monologues were laced with hilarious ethnic stereotypes. H.D. Hughley and the young Eddie Murphy were no different, playing on the very recognizable stereotypes of gay men, whites, and women.
Only seen through the lens of political correctness and the revisionist, Utopian progressive perspective are Trump's characterizations not funny. Of course they're funny, just as funny as those of Buddy Hackett and Joey Bishop
Most of Joan Rivers’ comedy would not play today except off the airwaves, only at home on DVDs. They are hopelessly incorrect and, despite attempts by neo-Puritanical moral watchdogs to brand them offensive, they are hilariously funny. There was nothing off limits or beyond the range of River’s comedy. Eddie Murphy’s rants about gays were funny then and without the censorious blinders one is obliged to wear now, still would be.
Murphy, Rivers, and the Borscht Belt, Carnegie Deli Jewish comedians made their bones and their living off of insults, caricature and satire. Mimicking Italians – the barber shops, the cannoli, and the goons way down the capo chain of the Mafia – Jews elbowing each other out of the way for a dollar’s worth of spilled nickels, blacks pimp walking and jive talking; fat people taking up space; gay men swishing, Arabs falconing and bagging their women, WASPs sipping tea while Dresden is bombed….Everything was funny.
There was nothing cruel about any of them, no twisted intent, no political agenda, just a canny sense of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the predictable. When all lesbians in Bernal Heights dress in flannel shirts, work pants, and shit-kickers, they are fair game. When S&M trannies always wear biker leather, and always lead each other around in stud collars and traces at the Folsom Street Fair, they beg for satire. When all obese women waddle their way up aircraft ramps that sway and buckle under their weight; and when they do a contortionist routine to get into their seats, they are absurdly funny, outrageous examples of a norm distorted.
Trump called Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia shitholes. 'Somalia stinks', he said, 'a failed, dysfunctional, horrible place. Ilhan Omar belongs there not here'. Trump says what most Americans are thinking and the Left simply cannot square such ingrained political incorrectness with their reformist vision.
Only the Left is surprised at Trump's doings. Every other American knows that their president is a tummler, a vaudevillian, and a Las Vegas casino performer. What's the difference anyway between Trump Tower and the Trump Center for the Performing Arts?
The Left, for all its St. Vitus' dance, whirling dervish, holy rolling hysteria has become the hilarity. They are the laughing stock, the butt of the dirtiest jokes. Their straight-faced, bald hypocrisy and uncanny historical ignorance are made for Borscht Belt comedy. Their uppity-ness, prissy wokeness, and holier-than-thou posturing are absolutely side-splitting. No one can take them seriously; and Donld Trump and the American people are having one, good belly laugh.
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