Make the Kennedy Center Honors Great Again

All sensible and right-minded people can agree that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in need of a serious infusion of greatness, but what about the Kennedy Center Honors?

Yes, President Donald Trump has made a compelling case for the paucity of good, wholesome, or even mildly edifying programming at the performing-arts complex on the Potomac River. “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth—THIS WILL STOP,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post touting his self-appointment as the chair of the center’s board of trustees. 

Trump meddling in the affairs of such a high-toned venue is invigorating, but as an inhabitant of the Midwest, I cannot say that it regularly crosses my mind to monitor the degree of wokeness of theatrical bookings in places hundreds of miles away. In fact, I lived in suburban Maryland for about 10 months in the early 2000s, and perhaps even then I sensed that the Kennedy Center was not quite worth my attention: During my stint living near the nation’s capital, I managed to visit a Hamburger Hamlet, the Brooks Brothers in Chevy Chase, and the American Film Institute’s campus in Silver Spring, but I never once set foot in the Kennedy Center. 

The Kennedy Center Honors, however, are a different matter altogether—their decline is not a local Beltway matter but a problem of national importance. 

The prize has been doled out annually since 1978 to assorted notables in the performing arts. In the early decades of their allocation, the honorees were more often than not made up of performers and creators who plied their trade on the stage rather than in the movies or on TV—that is to say, dancers, classical musicians, singers, playwrights, composers, and choreographers. Sure, movie and TV stars were always sprinkled in, but they weren’t the main attraction. One could find, say, Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant celebrated both on the Oscars and at the Kennedy Center Honors, but where could one find the choreographer George Balanchine, the composer Morton Gould, or the Broadway lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green properly commended, on national TV, except here?

Above all, the Kennedy Center Honors—unlike the actual, real-life structure called the Kennedy Center—was meant to be appreciated by all Americans, not just those with expendable income in the D.C. area. The show was packaged and condensed for annual Christmastime television broadcast on CBS, and in its heyday, it was always a very festive affair: ribbon-festooned honorees were parked in the Kennedy Center Opera House’s balcony while artists and admirers took to the stage to perform, dance, or sing things that somehow related to a given honoree’s life or career. 

In my household, this televised extravaganza was mandatory holiday viewing on par with A Charlie Brown Christmas or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This was partly due to the honors’ aforementioned emphasis on the performing arts, which meant that the broadcasts were likely the first time I learned about the conductor Georg Solti (a 1993 honoree), the Balanchine ballerina Maria Tallchief (1996), or the composer-conductor Andre Previn (1998). Of course, I already knew and enjoyed the work of Sidney Poitier (1995), Lauren Bacall (1997), and Clint Eastwood (2000), but that didn’t make their appearances any less deserving or their tributes any less entertaining.

Somewhere along the way, however, the honorees started to be selected with a bit less discernment. This was partly a reflection of an aging and changing culture; a roster like the 1979 group of honorees—Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, and Tennessee Williams—doesn’t grow on trees. All the same, I could not help but note the decline from the great Hollywood actress Myrna Loy (a 1988 honoree) to the British rock group The Who (2008). Cynically, I began to wonder whether those picking honorees were seeking to recognize the best artists or simply those most popular with the Baby Boomer audience the broadcast was undoubtedly attracting. How else to account for the selection of Bruce Springsteen (2009), Neil Diamond (2011), and, perhaps most ominously of all, David Letterman and Led Zeppelin (both 2012)?

After the Honors’ enterprising and imaginative co-creator-producer George Stevens Jr. ceased involvement in the show in 2014, the bottom fell out: During these years, not only has the program abandoned many of its classy trappings, but those deemed worthy of becoming honorees have included the likes of Cher (2018) and, inexplicably, the entire cast and crew of Sesame Street (2019).

Trump, who did not log the expected presidential appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term, should now direct his attention to revamping the prize. 

I harbor no illusions that the 47th president is a connoisseur of high culture, but he is a sincere fan of the sort of middlebrow artists—gifted, serious, but working in a popular vein—that the Honors used to fete with frequency. Besides, many worthwhile honorees have been skipped over in recent years. Before they were subjected to cancel culture, Woody Allen and Garrison Keillor would have been Honors shoo-ins. The veteran vocalists Pat Boone and Johnny Mathis are unquestionably more deserving than those 2024 honorees, the Grateful Dead. Admittedly, this seems a little outside of Trump’s wheelhouse, but why on earth has the Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent been omitted for so many years? 

I regret to inform the president that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John have already been honored, but if all else fails, at minimum Trump could install as honorees the vocalists to his beloved “Time to Say Goodbye,” Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. The Kennedy Center Honors and President Trump—it’s a match made in heaven.