Following President Trump's move to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in DC, former South Park writer Toby Morton has turned the TrumpKennedyCenter.org domain he acquired months ago into a satire site.

At first glance, the site looks similar to the actual Kennedy Center website, with a clean design, logo, and a login button. However, scroll down slightly, and a prominent tagline over a red background is the first clue that something is amiss. "A National Institution Devoted To Power And Loyalty," it reads.

Scroll some more, and TrumpKennedyCenter.org urges visitors to "Ring in the New Year with a performance by: The Epstein Dancers!" The site's logo alludes to the Epstein files as well, with redacted text revealing only "A...J. Trump...13-Year-Old Girl." A redesigned logo also turns the Kennedy Center's exterior columns into jail cells.

Morton, who also wrote for MadTV, purchased the domain name months ago, The Washington Post reports, following Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center. Claiming domains tied to news events has become somewhat of a hobby. Whenever a story starts "blowing up in the news," he preemptively purchases the domain name and begins crafting jokes; he now has more than 50.

Other domain names Morton owns include ResignChuck.com, which pretends to be written by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who claims he's "spent years perfecting the art of bowing, not to the people who elected me, but to the ones who bought the room." There's also MTG2026.org, parodying Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, billing her as a "racist seditionist fascist" who is "building a whiter tomorrow."

Morton's hobby "began as a kind of absurdist experiment: What happens if you take the branding of powerful or loud political figures and simply tell the truth through it?" he tells The Hollywood Reporter. The goal is "to use humor and discomfort to comment on how easily institutions and names can be co-opted for spectacle."

The real Kennedy Center site is kennedy-center.org. It now includes Trump's name, which construction crews also added to the building's facade earlier this month. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, has sued, arguing that a name change requires an act of Congress.

Artists have also cancelled performances, including Chuck Redd, the longtime host of the center's annual Christmas Eve jazz concert, CNN reports. Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell has threatened to sue Redd over the cancellation, the AP reports.

"The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality," Morton tells The Post. "It’s meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable."

The humorous domain name may serve as a quiet resistance for those disturbed by the renaming. It reframes the president's project as an invitation to "experience culture as authority, pageantry as truth, and excellence as defined by those in power," as the site puts it. "We exist to preserve what must endure, to honor what must not be questioned, and to gather those who understand that greatness is not chosen, it is recognized."

At the bottom of the site, a disclaimer in all-caps notes that it's a parody. Morton is also taking donations via PayPal and Venmo. He plans to continue updating and evolving the site to "reflect the absurdity of the moment." Expect "lots of surprises," although "some things are truly hard to parody," he says.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved