As it turns out, the distance from Walter Cronkite to Donald Trump is not as great as we might have imagined.
Once upon a time, Cronkite—the man whom the public is said to have trusted above all others to deliver the news—had an undemanding but high-profile late-career gig as the host of the Kennedy Center Honors. Since being inaugurated in 1978, the Honors have sought to commemorate the accomplishments of America’s leading performing artists, which means that its annual broadcast—always on CBS, nearly always around Christmastime—represented one of the rare intrusions of high culture on the low culture medium of TV.
Cronkite contributed to the program’s classiness, but its real elegance came courtesy of its numerous meritorious honorees: the composer Aaron Copland, the choreographer George Balanchine, the conductor Leonard Bernstein, the playwright Tennessee Williams, and the best of the best of the old-time movie stars: Jimmy Stewart, Lillian Gish, Cary Grant—Helen Hayes, for heaven’s sake.
My devoted readers will note that, as far back as 2014, I was bemoaning what I perceived to be the diminution of taste and norms at the Kennedy Center Honors. In a piece in the now-defunct Weekly Standard, I lamented the honoree-choosing system that permitted the inclusion of Led Zeppelin and David Letterman. By then, Cronkite, who had died in 2009, was no longer even the host. Caroline Kennedy stepped in for a while (she was refined, at least), but more recently, Stephen Colbert and Letterman himself have served as hosts. Yikes.
In short, I did not panic when I learned that the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors would be hosted by Trump, just as I did not break into cold sweats when an apparently Trump-influenced batch of honorees was chosen this year: the actor-singer Michael Crawford, the disco icon Gloria Gaynor, the band KISS, Rocky’s star/wordsmith Sylvester Stallone, and the country music legend George Strait. This list was no worse than many other recent groupings of honorees, and at least they reflected the sensibility of a single man rather than a committee. Who can doubt that Trump found personal meaning in Gaynor’s anthem “I Will Survive”? And we all know how much Trump loves The Phantom of the Opera, the title role in which was originated by Tony-winner Crawford.
To put it simply: The Kennedy Center Honors had nowhere to go but up, and on the basis of the broadcast on Tuesday night on CBS, they have done just that.
Yes, gone are the days of Cronkite and Balanchine and Appalachian Spring and all the rest—but those days had long been gone anyway. By and large, this year’s edition was a respectable entrant in the long-running franchise with an emphasis on audience uplift. For all his manifold faults, Trump can never be accused of wanting to induce depression or despair in his audience. How else to construe an awards show that began with an orchestral rendition of the theme from Rocky with composer Bill Conti at the baton?
Of course, Trump, doubling as host and presidential guest of honor, dominated the proceedings in a manner that past presidents have not. But, walking out on stage accompanied by the tune “The Final Bell,” also from Rocky, he shifted to the subdued, ultra-polite mode he sometimes uses when in the company of, say, King Charles or Zohran Mamdani. On the occasion of the Kennedy Center Honors, his countenance was pitch-perfect: restrained, respectful, even reverent towards the artists sitting high above in box seats. To invoke the famous lines of past honoree Paul Simon, no one was singing, apropos of Kennedy Center Honors hosts, “Where have you gone, Walter Cronkite? Our Honors turns its lonely eyes to you.”
Indeed, to faithful viewers of the Kennedy Center Honors, certain staples of the show remained constant. As ever, each honoree was introduced by a friend or admiring colleague singing his or her praises, but in this case, a star’s presence suggested the attainment of some state of inner peace with the reality of the second Trump administration. Thus, while it was not a surprise to see the known conservative Kelsey Grammer introduce Crawford, it was striking to see the libertarian (but presumably non-MAGA) Kurt Russell on hand for a tribute to Stallone. Russell was in fine form as he remembered the palpable effect Rocky had on its first audiences, who, by his account, cheered, “Stay up, Rocky! Stay up!” Russell also remembered asking himself, “Where in the hell did they find this boxer who is such a good actor?” Good stuff.
Similarly, the substance of each honoree’s tribute remained much the same but with a difference: the musical numbers seemed, if anything, longer and more fulsome than they had in recent years. Certainly the singers David Phelps and Laura Osnes squeezed every note out of their medley of tunes from The Phantom of the Opera.
Trump was consigned to the box seats for most of the show, but his presence was ubiquitous through taped remarks in which he rattled off each honoree’s greatness from his desk in the Oval Office. Often they had a semi-improvised Trumpian flair, as when, in talking about Crawford and his role in Phantom, he said, “A fantastic musical it was.” And he more or less admitted the resonance he has found in Gaynor’s signature song: “We will always find inspiration in those three simple words: ‘I Will Survive.’”
The segment on Strait was memorable for its twangy, tuneful performances by Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill, and Miranda Lambert, and Trump was seen chatting mid-tribute with Gaynor, whose reign as Queen of Disco overlapped with the president’s early years as a New York real-estate mogul. The presence of a disco ball on the stage during Gaynor’s tribute surely broke new ground for the Kennedy Center Honors, but it was a not-unpleasing backdrop to some energizing performances from the Gaynor songbook.
As one who has previously objected to Led Zeppelin being designated as honorees, I am hardly in a position to comment on the inclusion of KISS. But their admittedly antisocial presence was leavened by the unlikely star who introduced them, the ever-companionable Garth Brooks, and by my own surprising lack of resistance to the undeniably invigorating message inherent in “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Perhaps I have loosened up, or maybe this up-tempo, hard-to-dislike iteration of the Honors was what the doctor ordered this inflation-beset holiday season.
Trump may seem to be using the Kennedy Center for his own purposes; how else to make sense of the arts center board’s dubious decision to append Trump’s name to its name in the manner of a corporate merger? The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is about as felicitous-sounding as Paramount, A Skydance Corporation. All the same, this year’s Kennedy Center Honors was less ostentatiously or obnoxiously Trumpian than expected. The evening did not resemble a MAGA rally or a UFC fight. To the contrary, the show still contained the highest concentration of quality arts content on network TV on Tuesday night—which may say less about Trump than the overall state of cultural affairs in our country.
Read the full article here
