Trump’s inspired Kennedy Center Honors picks spotlight liberals’ own performance art

The Kennedy Center Honors are the nation’s top performing-arts-achievement awards and their celebration the highlight of the capital’s cultural calendar.

Yet the honorees are typically announced in that most artless of ways — a press release.

Not this year.

You’d think liberals who decry conservatives as contemptible Philistines would be pleased to see a Republican president focus the country’s attention on the arts with something of a show itself.

But no — not when that president is Donald Trump. They slammed the selections too, though the list isn’t much different from those under Democratic presidents such as Barack Obama — and reflects a wide swath of what Americans appreciate and admire in the arts.

Of course, the small spectacle Trump held Wednesday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts wasn’t exactly establishment Washington.

The president walked to a podium in front of five pictures on easels, all covered with red cloth. Two attractive women in sleeveless dresses and high heels assisted — distinctly reminiscent of ring girls in boxing and Trump’s beloved UFC — dramatically unveiling each honoree on cue.

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“Rocky” creator-star Sylvester Stallone, glam-metal rockers KISS, country king George Strait, disco goddess Gloria Gaynor and Broadway luminary Michael Crawford will receive the 48th annual Kennedy Center Honors. Trump himself — also the center’s chairman — will host the gala tribute Dec. 7, which CBS will air later that month.

DC doesn’t have a lot of glitz, so the December weekend honorees and those paying tribute to them spend in town is a big deal. I know because I covered the cocktail parties, the rehearsals, the red carpets and more for years when I lived in Washington.

And the political and performing elite can’t stand the idea of Donald Trump taking part in the ritzy rituals.

Trump didn’t attend a single Honors gala in his first term after 2017 honoree “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear said he’d skip any White House event to protest the president.

But Trump 2.0 is bolder and brasher — and wants to make real his “vision for a Golden Age in arts and culture,” as he put it.

The media fawned over First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden.

They published deep think pieces about her husband’s summer playlists.

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But the same people who believe right-wingers want to cut all cultural education are annoyed when a GOP president spends an hour talking about great artists.

“You might be wondering why you haven’t heard much about important issues like inflation, health care or infrastructure lately, but there’s a very good reason: Donald Trump doesn’t care,” late-night talker Seth Meyers said.

Conservatives “want to go on Fox News and whine about woke,” he continued. “This is what the right really cares about. This is why Trump is spending his precious time announcing the Kennedy Center Honors.”

Cue the subtle — and not-so-subtle — digs about the choices.

“The line-up explains a lot about him, his power and why he’s president,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson intoned. It’s “more populist than ‘high’ culture.”

“At the Kennedy Center, Trump Puts His Pop Culture Obsession on Display,” The New York Times headlined its story.

Time Senior Correspondent Philip Elliott declared, “The Kennedy Center Honors Is Now Just Another Trump Show,” and likened the Florida man to Stalin, who made the genius Shostakovich’s life a living nightmare.

This year’s choices, Elliott wrote, “signal yet the latest example of Trump putting his thumb on the scale of American culture and tossing it back to yesteryear.”

Who’s going to tell the storied Time the Kennedy Center Honors are lifetime-achievement awards whose winners always send us “back to yesteryear”?

Liberals howling this isn’t the highfalutin’ list it should be forget the first awardees under Obama included Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro and Mel “Blazing Saddles” Brooks. LL Cool J won in 2017. Trump’s is not a way-out-there list.

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It’s true one spot usually goes to classical music or dance, and I’m disappointed that’s missing — though to Trump, Michael Crawford is operatic.

And he did originate the title role of “The Phantom of the Opera,” which Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote for his then-wife, classical soprano Sarah Brightman.

KISS is an inspired choice — a great American story.

Two Jewish New York kids whose families had fled the Holocaust, Stanley Bert Eisen and Chaim Witz, transformed themselves into the makeup-laden, otherworldly Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

And in doing so, they transformed concert touring itself.

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Texan George Strait helped bring back a very American genre as a trailblazer in neotraditional country in the 1980s, when pop crossovers were stealing stages in Nashville and beyond.

Now young country-not-crossover stars such as Zach Top and Parker McCollum cite his influence.

As a Strait fan from Alberta, the Texas of Canada, told me, “People like him because he’s real. He’s not fake ass. And he can actually sing.”

Authenticity — it reminds me of my time covering the Honors.

At the various events, the rest of the press wanted to talk only to the cool kids.

During the cocktail party the year Steve Martin won, for example, their sights were set on well-known actors.

That let me have Ricky Jay, Steve Martin’s friend who appeared with him in the David Mamet film “The Spanish Prisoner,” all to myself. He was one of the greatest magicians of our time, a learned man with an amazing medieval collection.

Another year, it was just me and an AP reporter left on the red carpet for Chris Cornell, there to perform for The Who — the super famous stars had walked it already. The AP fellow knew nothing about him, so I was able to ask all the questions of one of rock’s greatest voices.

Speaking of David Mamet, can Trump turn his attention to Mark Twain Prize for American Humor next?

The Kennedy Center refuses to give it to politically incorrect geniuses like him and Woody Allen.

Washington could certainly use some intelligent laughs these days.