The Kennedy Center Honors isn't shy about proclaiming its importance. According to its website, getting tapped at its annual ceremony is the moral equivalent of a British knighthood or the French Legion d'Honneur. When the honors began in 1978, the point was to single out the most exemplary figures in American culture and give them their due in the same way that our allegedly more civilized European cousins do. Since then, the awards have shed the self-conscious tilt toward figures from the classical arts to become more of a pop-culture fest, but the faux pomp, usually validated by the presence of the president of the United States, remains the same ...
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