The Understatement Could Crack Concrete

 

Trump took over the board of the Kennedy Center, engineered his election as its new chairman, and fired all the previous leaders and administrators. American high culture is about to be renovated in the Trump style.

“This is low on the pecking order in terms of crisis,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, “but it’s also emblematic of what we’re dealing with, which is the amassing of centralized power in a way that does not seem consistent with our constitutional traditions.”

The understatement -- the sheer restraint -- by Mr. Kreis provoked a LOL moment for me.

But I confess some conflicted reaction to the trump move -- he gets more Jethro every day -- in that lowbrow is its own style, its own subversion of elite power, and therefore as American as fried chicken. And perhaps I should remind you that in his day Shakespeare was writing throwaway pop culture, and he got rich on it.