Trump Center Honors
A weird, unnecessary intervention.
Steven Taylor has already noted the authoritarian nature of the President personally choosing artists to be honored by the Kennedy Center. I would add two things.
First, despite his firing the existing selection board and, in his own words, being “about 98% involved” in the selection of honorees, and having “turned down plenty” of candidates because “They were too woke,” few would have batted an eye at the selections had Trump not made such a big deal about the process. As the NYT report noted, “while some of this year’s recipients have expressed support for Mr. Trump, the list doesn’t read like a blatantly political roster.”
- George Strait is arguably the second most important country artist of the last four decades behind 2020 honoree Garth Brooks. Plenty of other mainstream country artists (Reba McEntire in 2018, Merle Haggard in 2010, George Jones in 2008, Dolly Parton in 2006, Loretta Lynn in 2003, etc.) have been honored over the years.
- Gloria Gaynor is certainly one of the bigger names of the disco era.
- Kiss isn’t the sort of band typically honored by the establishment but they sold out stadiums for half a century and were incredibly influential on live performance in pop music.
- Sylvester Stallone won a Best Picture Oscar out of the gate for writing Rocky. While his action movie persona is often the subject of ridicule, he’s had a wildly successful career by any measure and is still going strong half a century later with Tulsa King.
- Michael Crawford is a legend in the world of theater. He was getting honored eventually.
Looking at the year-by-year list going back to the honor’s 1978 inception, this year’s group doesn’t stand out as an outlier. While I know Kiss’ Gene Simmons and Stallone are pretty staunch Republicans, and presume the same of Strait, there’s no reason to believe Gaynor or Crawford are Trump supporters.
Second, there’s simply no reason for Trump to intervene in this way. Aside from there being no evidence that the committee has previously leaned toward honoring leftist entertainers, Trump already controls the highest honor the nation has to offer: The Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Which, ironically, was started by John Kennedy.) Presidents of both parties have long given the award to singers, actors, and other entertainers whose work they enjoy.
Amusingly, Trump was far more stingy with the honor, bestowing it only 24 times, in his first term than Joe Biden (57), Barack Obama (118 over two terms), George W. Bush (82 over two terms), Bill Clinton (89 over two terms), and Ronald Reagan (86 over two terms). Hell, Kennedy awarded it 31 times in 1963 alone.
The list reads like nostalgia for El Taco’s misspent youth.
I noticed that the honorees don’t include Scott Baio, Kid Rock, Mel Gibson, or Roseanne Barr.
Another thing that stands out is that.. the Awards committee was itself surprised at the announcement? So again, it’s just one mans whims (and whoever was last person in the room with him, probably).
FWIW, I do not think of these inductees as being political, per se. That is, I don’t think he is rewarding co-partisans.
I do think that having the president make the selection is inherently political, however, and these selections feel like a combination of nostalgia (as @Kathy notes) and more than a little of “This is what I, Donald J. Trump, think culture looks like.”
It also kind of feels like letting a kid pick the menu for a fancy dinner.
And I have no specific objections to the selections (Straight and Stalone, in particular, make a lot of sense), and wouldn’t have paid attention if Trump wasn’t so directly inserting himself.
Stalone is a great pick. The first Rambo is surprising if you come to it via its sequels. He’s very good at that, maybe even better than Rocky.
He’s also been in some classic trash like Cobra and Rambo III.
I think you missed the obvious: Trump believes that no cultural expressions should be honored that don’t align with his tastes or values. By no one.
He basically spells it out:
And although, by itself, the Kennedy Center Honors are small potatoes, this reeks more than a bit of totalitarianism.
This is a really weird flex by Trump. Award show hosts are notoriously open to bombing. Almost no one is Bob Hope or Billy Crystal. It is definitely harder than it looks. Though I expect to the in-theater audience to be stacked in Trump’s favor, everyone recognizes a badly timed joke and the home audience will immediately tune out a Trump rant in this setting. In short, this gig sets up Trump to fail on a national stage. Widespread disinterest (which will include my house) is his best hope.
It’s not that these recipients aren’t deserving, but rather what deserving candidates were eliminated by this guy base on his distorted perspective. Perhaps some of that information will become known.
I think it’s more of a situation where Trump wants to jump in front of the cameras that are pointed at people who are legitimately famous. And he also wants to shut down any awards to people he doesn’t want to appear on camera with.
So not blatantly political, yes. But still political.
Everything is optics. Everything.
@Jay L. Gischer:
This is the right idea, but it’s more pathological than camera whoring.
Look at the photo with the OP. The Donald would die to have the cordial, respectful repartee with the members of Led Zeppelin that Obama is getting here. But, Trump and Melania didn’t claim their seats in the Presidential Box for the gala performance any of the years the Honors were given in his first term. I suspect that was because Trump feared being publicly disrespected by one of the honorees or performers.
Trump is inserting himself in the Kennedy Center’s business (not only the Honors, but with the Center’s board) because he desperately wants to be welcomed into a social circle that, for the most part, holds him in contempt. If the cool kids won’t let him join, then he’s going to take over the club and reform it so they will welcome him. It really is pathetic.
Trump actually wears more make-up than KISS, more hairspray, and higher heeled boots, soooo….
@Eusebio: History is littered with deserving artists eliminated by some judge based on his distorted perspective. I am sorry for them all, but that is why artists should not put to much store in recognition.
@Scott F.:
Agreed all around.
Sadly, entertainers are his true peers.
He’s also trying to extort a Nobel Prize out of Norway.
@dazedandconfused:
But not the great entertainers.
I’m a little surprised he snubbed Dean Cain, who starred in “Andy The Talking Hedgehog,” along with playing Lois Lane’s love interest in “Lois and Clark,” and Supergirl’s deadbeat dad in “Supergirl”
Maybe next year.
Oh, god, he also played Peter Strzok in “OBAMAGATE: The Movie” (I personally prefer “OBAMAGATE: The Musical”…)
I do actually wonder who he rejected for being “too woke”.
@Joe:
It happens all the time, for sure. I may wonder why the B52’s are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but, say, the Eurythmics are in it. But I understand that these things happen. In the case of the Kennedy Center honors, however, trump seems to be saying he employed self-bestowed veto power over what should be a committee decision, but of course he could’ve just been BSing.
@CSK:
I hope you aren’t suggesting Hulk Hogan wasn’t great. 😉