HUMOR: The Upside Down
Trump's saving that cultural center on the Potomac from "woke" actors and soaring ticket sales. No one's going to see the rubbish the president is rolling out, but Drew has thoughts on fixing that.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
Kennedy Center ticket sales have plummeted since Trump takeover.
— Headline in The Washington Post
President Donald Trump, a man of the arts, took over the flagging Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in February to recapture the glory it experienced as recently as 2024. Trump felt that the programming had become too “woke” and the performers were too non-white and that the Kennedy Center had lost its way by booking acts centered around transvestites and Bronies, who are adult fans of My Little Pony, the toy and the television series. Love knows no animated bounds.
Like Ulysses S. Grant before him, Trump was going to lead this iconic American arts center out of the Wilderness (with thousands dead and many burned alive) and restore preeminence to the nation’s most treasured performance hall. Thanks to Trump’s sweeping changes, ticket sales have fallen faster than a brick dropped from Trump Towers. (“Brick”, interestingly, happens to be the title of the breakthrough song for singer Ben Folds who was the Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony for eight years until he resigned in protest of Trump’s ascension to the performing arts pulpit. It appears that ticket sales followed Folds out the door.)
As I noted in a previous column regarding Les Miserables, it is simple enough to tweak some of our most beloved musicals and productions to make them appeal more broadly to the MAGA masses who simply want shows that make them feel better about our nation’s past and tap their Gucci loafers to a simple tune. With that said, I offer up some edits that are sure to restore the Kennedy Center to its former 2024 glory.
“Waiting for Go…Doh” (The Musical): Samuel Beckett’s existential classic starring Didi and Gogo has confounded audiences since it first appeared in 1952. It has attracted some of the best actors in the world including Robin Williams, Steve Martin, F. Murray Abraham, and Bill and Ted. But there is not a lot of action on stage while the characters wait for Godot, so in this modern telling we add some songs (Joan Osborne “One of Us” and XTC’s “Dear God” should be available for reasonable licensing fees) and Didi and Gogo are replaced by lovable drunks Homer Simpson and Barney Gumble from The Simpsons. And Eff Murray Abraham if he can’t get onboard with this reboot.
“Porgy and Bess”: Opera is not most people’s cup of tea, but this George Gershwin offering is one of the most popular and is sure to please Kennedy Center audiences who want to tell the babysitter that they are going to the opera just once in their adult lives. Once upon a time that babysitter would have been fast asleep when the opera goers got home after this four-hour slog, but we here in the editing studios of the Advance can easily streamline the narrative. First, Porgy doesn’t need to be disabled. If he’s not limping everywhere that really picks up the tempo. If Porgy runs from scene-to-scene we can bring this in under three hours. Plus, if we assume Bess’ drug dealer Sportin’ Life was killed in an attack on his drug running boat in the Caribbean we can shave at least 20 minutes off that storyline. Now we’ve got an opera with one intermission and only one more problem to address—make Porgy and Bess white.
“The Spy Who Loved Me” (The Musical): There might be a reason that James Bond has not been explored in musical theatre beyond the occasional off-off-off Broadway production in Hoboken, but I can’t think of a reason why. It has guns and it has Pussy Galore! (Yes, I know she was a character in “Goldfinger” but blind devotion to artistic integrity is not making up for the 60% decline in ticket sales at the Kennedy Center. If the President wants Pussy Galore, then by god the man is going to get Pussy Galore even if she says “no”!) Plus, “The Spy Who Loved Me” features the Carly Simon hit “Nobody Does It Better,” and I think we know who might be coming to opening night to bask in the glow of a half full theatre to listen to Kirk Cameron serenade him with lyrics like: “And nobody does it better, Though sometimes the majority of the country wishes they would.”
“South Pacific”: Much of the dramatic tension in South Pacific stems from forbidden love with minorities and the lack of a closing number to really bring home the fact that the United States won World War II, and all our soldiers came home and married their white high school sweethearts. Sure, “Some Enchanted Evening” sounds great in the shower and of course “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame”… especially if she’s a porn actress or Playmate … but these songs occur in Act I, and no red-blooded male ever wants to make “Happy Talk.” What I’m sure Rodgers and Hammerstein would readily admit is that the musical needed a song that ignored mixed race relationships and a song that showed that to love a person based upon who they are and not how they look is dumb. For a song that also celebrates the once dominant military of the United States before they started accepting fatties and women, ladies and gentlemen, I give you “In the Navy” by the Village People. There won’t be a dry eye in the place and maybe even a few “Sieg Heils” as Lieutenant Cable and Ensign Forbush come together and sing: “In the navy, Come on, protect the mother land, In the navy, Come on and join your fellow man, In the navy, Come on people, and make a stand against DEI.”
“A Chorus Line”: This show needs very little in the way of tweaking but could stand for some more twerking. And enough with the gay male characters. What chorus line needs male dancers? The Rockettes and the Laker Girls have done just fine with all-female troupes. Paula Adbul was a Laker Girl, not Prince. As President Trump noted after watching a performance of Cats, he found the female cats quite fetching but not so much the men in tight cat leggings. As the original Broadway cast recording notes in the feminist ballad “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three,” get the “bingo-bongos done” and you’ll be getting national tours.
Donations have always been a staple of funding for the Kennedy Center so just think of the new and improved Trump Center for the Arts as one long chorus line or, even better, a huge strip club with multiple stages. As the great poet Flo Rida once wrote: “Make it rain, I’m makin’ it snow, Work the pole, I got the bank roll, I’ma say that I prefer no clothes, I’m into that, I love women exposed, She threw it back at me, I gave her more, Cash ain’t no problem, I know where it goes.”
Obviously, it goes to the arts!
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