Aug.15

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Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Culture Wars: "Kennedy Center" to Crown Five New Honorees

Yesterday, we had an item about the Trump administration imposing itself on the Smithsonian. Today, it's an item about the Trump administration imposing itself on a different Washington institution, namely the Kennedy Center.

During his first term, Trump largely held the Kennedy Center at arm's length. In part, that is because it is named after a prominent Democratic president. And in part, it is because most of the people who might have been expected to appear on stage at the venue, or to have been in the audience at the venue, were likely to be Trump-hostile. It would be pretty embarrassing for him if there were footage of him arriving for an event, and facing a loud chorus of boos. So, he took a pass on things like the annual Kennedy Center honors.

This term, as part of efforts to make popular culture more conservative, Trump has endeavored to remake the venue in his image. He's replaced the board of directors with himself and a group of sycophants. He's gotten involved in programming, both the shows that are staged, and the ones that are verboten. And now, he's helping to pick the annual Kennedy Center honorees. We put Kennedy Center in quotations in the headline, because normally the choice is the result of a process that involves both the Kennedy Center staff and the general public (and NOT the sitting president). That means that calling this year's choices "Kennedy Center honorees" is not terribly accurate, since they are really "Trump Administration Honorees." Certainly, the five picks this year got there in a very different manner than their 255 predecessors.

It is not too hard to figure out how Trump and his team settled on this year's list. Here they are, with explanations:

• Michael Crawford: Trump is well-known as a fan of Broadway musicals, particularly the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and even more particularly Phantom of the Opera. Crawford originated the title role on Broadway.
  
  
• KISS: The leader of KISS is Gene Simmons. Born in Israel as Chaim Witz, he is staunchly pro-Israel. He's also a conservative Republican, and while he has been critical of Trump occasionally in the past, he's been all-in on Trump since the war in Gaza began.
  
  
• Sylvester Stallone: Stallone is also an outspoken Trump supporter. Further, he played both Rocky and Rambo, two of the most macho characters in American cinema.
  
  
• George Strait: The "King of Country" is a Republican, though he keeps quiet about it, and is best known for his (nonpartisan) work on behalf of wounded veterans. He's inarguably the most deserving of the five new honorees.
  
  
• Gloria Gaynor: This is the only one of the five honorees that requires any real guesswork. We suspect that she was chosen, in part, to diversify the list, and to avoid a bunch of headlines about how all the honorees are white guys. If so, it would be interesting to hear Trump or anyone else on his team explain how that is different from DEI initiatives.
  
  That said, the primary reason she was chosen has to be that she performed the song "I Will Survive." Trump is the hero of his own narrative, and the champion who triumphed over... whatever he triumphed over. That song has played at his rallies, and he undoubtedly thinks the title expresses an important part of his story. Just as he apparently did not actually listen to the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," he presumably didn't actually listen to the lyrics of "I Will Survive," since it is about a woman escaping an abusive relationship. A little bit on the nose, if Trump was paying attention.
  
  Incidentally, there is no indication that Gaynor is a Republican (or a Democrat, for that matter). Quite a few people in the music and entertainment industries are urging her to turn down the award, with the notion being that Trump is just using her as a prop. It's happened before; Mel Brooks turned the honor down during the Bush years because of the Iraq War (later accepting it from Barack Obama). In fact, it apparently happened this year; there are reports that Tom Cruise was going to be on the list, and said "No, thanks." He's basically apolitical, at least in public, so as to remain as bankable a movie star as is possible.

Broadly speaking, in addition to checking Trump's particular boxes (and he specifically noted that he vetoed a couple of "too woke" candidates), the honorees are clearly meant to be "popular," and not the kind of artists "elitists" would favor. That's particularly true of KISS, which is really a product-marketing operation that happens to produce music. Still, the President surely gives himself too much credit here. Sure, there have been some "cultural elites" among past Kennedy Center honorees, but the list also includes Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson, Sean Connery, Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel and George Clooney. If those folks aren't "popular," we don't know who is.

We will also note, while we are at it, that KISS is a 1970s band, Rocky came out in 1977, "I Will Survive" was released in 1978, and Phantom is the "new" kid on the block, having debuted in 1987. It is another reminder that while Trump fancies himself a connoisseur of pop culture, his references are all 40+ years old (or nearly so).

In any event, Trump is thinking a lot about legacy right now, and a lot about "settling the score" with the various entities in American society that did not embrace him. So, be ready for a lot of this kind of stuff. Will this finally shut down the right-wing "Everything is biased in favor of the libs!" grievance factory? Probably not. (Z)