Trump Center Honors

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.