Resigning From The Kennedy Center Will Not Make A Difference
That Shonda Rhimes’s Thinks It Will Says That Hollywood Has Learned Nothing After A Decade In Regard To Their Place in Politics
February 13th 2025 will no doubt go down in posterity as the day the revolution officially began. It happened when a brave woman of color chose to stand up to a tyrannical, fascist President who was corrupt, venal and determining to destroy everything the country stood for. Someone of principle had to take a stand against tyranny that would inspire the masses to react.
And so Shonda Rhimes bravely resigned from the Kennedy Center.
I have little doubt that because the ability to pick up sarcasm is something that extremists have demonstrated they are unable to do, some people will say I am mocking Rhimes. I don’t. I hold her in the same regard I always have. (That is sarcasm as anyone who’s read anything I’ve written about the kind of TV she produces.) I should mention I have as much foreboding about the next four years as many people do and I do believe that things need to be done. But the fact that Rhimes no doubt believes in her heart of hearts that this is a gesture of resistance — and will no doubt be praised immensely in some circles — shows that Hollywood has more or less learned nothing not only from the last election but the entire decade since Trump arose at a political force.
No one will deny that ever since Trump entered politics the illusion of civility that has surrounded the GOP’s political discourse in the past is now completely gone. It was never really there for a long time — the dog whistles of Fox News and the right for the last twenty years before this were perceptible — but Trump’s electoral success has given the GOP rank and file to basically give in to their worst angels of their nature with no real consequences. There’s an argument for much of the last several years that the worst parts of their agenda has been halted as much due to their own demand for purity and organizational incompetence but the manner in which they behave now speaks to the worst nature of our society.
But having spent as much time in the last several years very close to the left-wing involving not only progressive newsletters but so much as Hollywood it’s also clear to me that the rise of Trump has essentially allowed the left that same leeway. As with the right, it’s been there all along, though because it is measured fundamentally in academic journals and shows more contempt with both political parties than just the GOP, it has been harder to see. But in the aftermath of Trump’s upset victory in 2016, the Democratic Party, desperate to regain power, has made alliances with the far left in a way they haven’t since the end of the Vietnam War. This has helped the far left infinitely more than the Democrats — the last three elections clearly indicate how badly it has hurt them across the board — but the Party at least seems willing to learn from this mistake. It’s clear to me that in the last few months members of its coalition — particularly Hollywood — haven’t learned anything from it.
The alliance that the Democrats have had with Hollywood during the 21st century has done more good for Hollywood then its helped the Democratic Party. The reasons should be obvious: far more than the Republicans the Democrats have struggled with labels of elitism and being out of touch. When one of your biggest benefactors is a bunch of millionaires dispelling that image becomes that much harder. There’s never been any evidence — certainly not last year — that Hollywood can influence votes in swing states and their influence in California has always been negligible in a state that has gone Blue for nine straight Presidential elections. Yet somehow the Democratic Party has been convinced that celebrities mere presence will make them more popular. Politics has never worked that way.
There’s also an argument that Hollywood has been so angry at Trump not so much because of all of his racist and angry tweets but because they look down on him the same way he does them. They’ve been making Trump a punchline for thirty years and he’s never fit into their circle the way so many of their rich friends do. When he chooses not to attend Correspondents Dinners or the events of the Kennedy Center, it offends them on a personal level. They’ve been mocking politicians for decades and they’ve made it very clear that they think Republicans are beneath them. For all we know every single political figure who attends these dinners really has been offended by the jokes they make or the attitudes they hold, but they’re just civil enough to be polite about it. Trump’s decision not to attend these events isn’t nearly as big a violation of so many of the norms he’s shattered but Hollywood considers it the most grievous because it demonstrates he doesn’t care about them the way other elected officials claim to.
And it’s worth noting many of them were fine letting Trump appear in commercials, letting him give cameos in TV shows, letting him be part of the system WHEN HE WAS JUST A BILLIONAIRE. They were fine with him hanging out with him then. It’s only now that he’s made it clear how much he hates them that they’ve made it clear how weird he was behind the scenes, how fragile he was and how much of a prick he was. Perhaps they feel guilty about putting him in the public consciousness; more like they’re ashamed that they actually once thought it was cool to hang out with this guy who turned out to be a bad friend — and who didn’t need them the same way other political figures had.
For the last eight years Hollywood has gone out of its way to paint itself as an official branch of the ‘resistance’ against everything Trump and the GOP represent. The Democrats have gone out of their way to embrace them, particularly the more diverse members of their population, all minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. But even as they claimed that they were what America looked like, it always had a huge asterisk as its never really been clear if they actually stand for everything they claim to advocate for — or if they do though, they haven’t been using it specifically to let Hollywood stand in for the rest of America.
I will always applaud the diversity in programming in television over the past decade from the context of storytelling. But never once did I believe that it was symbolic of the bigger issues plaguing so many of the minorities involved. And I never truly believed that, given the fragmenting of television on every platform — which had essentially been in place long before the rise of Trump — that it was ever going to have any effect on the national discourse or influence a single vote.
And so much of what performers chose to do over this same period has always been a mix of virtue signaling and a kind of exclusivity. The virtue signaling is seen in many ways — appearing at anti-Trump rallies, much of late night comedy, an increasingly messaging from celebrities at public appearances towards social justice — but none of these actions are anything other than performative. Much as they’d like to spin it, the Mark Ruffalo’s and Stephen Colbert’s are not risking anything when the speak out against Trump. They will be rich and famous before and they’re rich and famous afterwards. It doesn’t have the same power as so many of communities that have been and will continue to be affected not just by Trump or Republicans but all politicians if they chose to do. Speaking out against illegal immigration, for the lives of the LGBTQ+, or the war in Afghanistan doesn’t cost you as much if you’re a millionaire then everyone else who does. And it sure as hell won’t change anything for that situation.
Rhimes’ decision to resign from the Kennedy Center is just the most recent example of this performative motion. For the record, I didn’t even known Rhimes was the treasurer of the Kennedy Center and I’m betting most Americans didn’t at all. Compared to everything else in the new administration the fact that loyalists to the President are now in charge of a center — that again, he never chose to attend while he was in office the first time — this barely marks as a ripple on the tidal waves that are coming. I suspect it doesn’t matter that much even to those in Hollywood or the arts.
So let’s be honest: Rhimes did this for herself. If you choose to stand for something, then the more meaningful action would have been to stay on and fight for your causes. It’s just as likely Trump would have fired her sooner rather than later but at least she could have convincingly argued that she had fought the good fight. And to be clear this was a symbolic position for Rhimes, it’s not like her livelihood depends on bit on being treasurer of the Kennedy Center or that it’s a burden that she was fired.
No, Rhimes resigned because if she had stayed both Hollywood and the left-wing would have turned on her in a matter of days. Because that’s the other part of this that Hollywood will not talk about any more than the left will. For all the arguments that the left makes about being inclusive and fighting for the rights of this disenfranchised, when it comes both to Hollywood and the far left they care more about being part of their own gated community and they will turn on people they considered heroes the moment they chose anything less than a devotion to purity.
We’ve seen this play out countless times over the last decade, particularly in regard to Dave Chapelle and J.K. Rowling. Both were darlings of Hollywood when they were under attack from the right because of what they stood for but the moment they started to show deviations from that pattern they have been ostracized by so many of the people who were once their biggest fans. We are seeing the most recent version of this play out in the ‘controversy’ surrounding Emilia Perez in the leadup to the Oscars. Hollywood went out of its way to embrace Karla Sofia Gascon, a transgender actress because they have embraced the rights of the transgender community as their latest battle cry. The fact that Gascon is Spanish adds to their level of being an international community instead of xenophobic.
But when it was revealed that Gascon had, years earlier, made tweets that were derogatory of Islam and George Floyd Hollywood immediately turned on her. Her co-stars Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez have said nothing supportive of her over the last few weeks and are now saying the experience that just weeks ago they were joyous about has been forever tainted — and that they never knew Gascon at all. That would seem to suggest their own blinders and they never saw Gascon as anything more than what she represented rather than as a human being with her own opinions.
The controversy over Emilia Perez is just the latest in the last two years in which Hollywood has done everything in its power to make it clear how entitled, elitist and bigoted they are despite the myth of inclusivity. It was shown over and over during the strikes that crippled Hollywood during the summer and into the fall of 2023; it was shown how they divided over Israel and Palestine after the events of October 7th — and began forcing the guilds that had negotiated deals with them as to uncomfortable positions just days afterwards; it was shown in how George Clooney wrote an op-ed in which he thought his position as a Democratic fundraiser qualified him to say that Joe Biden show step down as the Democratic nominee for President; it was shown in how they did everything to put their thumb on the scale for Kamala Harris — including publicly excoriating Cheryl Hines when she refused to denounce her husband for supporting Trump and the later statements by Eva Longoria and Laverne Cox who said they were planning to leave the country after he won.
And everything involving so much of the Academy Awards season this year demonstrates how much the film industry has turned everything else into a polarizing battle — one that is essentially being driven by the left far more than the right. It’s not just the controversy of Gascon’s tweets; it’s the way that The Brutalist became a target for the use of AI, enraging the creative forces in Hollywood who spent much of the strike arguing against it’s use. It’s the way that Mikey Madison earned outrage because she said she by and large didn’t use an intimacy coordinator in her scenes in Anora — a cause célèbres of women in the film industry for years. It’s how Demi Moore came under the attack because she kissed a fifteen year old when she was nineteen nearly forty years ago.
And what solutions do insiders suggest? Not that all of this is some kind of extreme argument over nothing but rather better vetting of the stars and directors going forward. For people who seem to claim they are for free speech, they are arguing that one must do a better job censoring yourself — as in the fact that there now seems to be a process among celebrities of ‘scrubbing’ your social media profile. That Hollywood has spent so much time outraged at every single tweet by Trump over the last decade as signs of him being a deranged lunatic almost suggests their own hypocrisy and perhaps envy. They wish they could say the kind of things he did online and not take any consequences for them and they hold them to a standard for calling him a monster for saying these things.
There are going to be serious problems during the next few years; they are already beginning to form. But the idea that this kind of performative activism among Hollywood is going to make a difference is not only ludicrous but almost juvenile. You would think by now that none of the actions they do will make any difference to the national discourse or even affect the President. But they keep doing them because they are performers and in their mind, performing is the way to take a stand.
Hollywood is not entirely representative of the left but they are by far the worst examples of its worst aspects. They are a group of millionaires and billionaires who believe that because they play working men and women on TV or film, they understand what they go through. They don’t have a clue, and they certainly wouldn’t trade away their fortunes to live among them again. They exist in the same kind of bubble that all elitists do: they think what matters to them matters for the entire world. In that they are just as mistaken as the conservative talking heads who make their fortunes on cable news and in think tanks. And at their core, they are just as bigoted, mean-spirited and exclusive about their membership as the far right is and just as willing to turn on one of their own when they don’t meet the same standards of purity — standards its worth noting many academic leftists don’t believe they represent in the first place.
Don’t look to me yet for a solution when it comes to either combating Trump or the hold he has over the GOP voters or elected officials. (I have a vague idea, but I’m still working on it.) What I know deep down is that Hollywood not only has no part in it, they’ve been a big part of the problem for a long time and they have no clue how to solve it. Not performing at the Kennedy Center won’t change a thing that happens the next few years. But it seems like it does to those there and that’s why they’re doing it. It won’t help the people they claim to care about and it won’t upset any of the ‘enemy’. But those are the only stands they’ll take — the ones that make them look good and don’t hurt them.
And for those who argue whether Trump will use the Kennedy Center to take revenge by keeping people out, don’t worry. If the last decade has proven anything, it’s that Hollywood has made it very clear they hold him in as much contempt as he holds them. Anticipate a lot of statements along the lines of: “Even if he invited me I wouldn’t come” or “He’s too thin-skinned to listen to dissent.” The former is the right kind of virtue signaling and the latter just demonstrates that there as much like the President then they want to admit. They’re just like him: they only want to hear applause and they’ll turn on anyone who violates their covenants. And it’s not like this will hurt them in any way that matters. They’re as elitist as he is. The ordinary people he’s hurting, they are going to be in trouble. But honestly; do they care about them any more than the President really? Or is it just something they say in hashtags and speeches? I have my opinion, of course, and I expect they’ll tell us theirs — at a distance and with no consequence, as always.