Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
On Tuesday night at the White House, Joe Biden presented the National Medal of Arts to several famous and successful entertainers, including Bruce Springsteen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mindy Kaling. Personally, I quite enjoy all of their work. Still, the question must be asked: Why is this a job for the President of the United States?
In general, the state intervenes to perform functions that the private sector does not, or at least insufficiently, performs. We need the government to provide national defense, infrastructure, a safety net, scientific research, etc., because the market doesn’t have a strong incentive to meet those needs.
But awarding celebrity awards is something the private sector is offering at a robust level. It feels like hardly a week goes by without some entertainers taking to the TV to give awards to other entertainers. As wonderful as Bruce Springsteen’s music is, it does not suffer from a lack of admiration, for which the state has an obvious role to make up for.
Hollywood has created and sustained a gigantic awards business that offers cheap content and a large audience that advertisers are happy to support. In this sector there is no need to create a public option.
Moreover, the National Medal of Arts is not even the executive branch’s only instrument for recognizing popular entertainers. Last fall, Biden presented Elton John with the National Humanities Medal. And President Obama once awarded Paul McCartney the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. So there are no fewer than three categories of presidential medals that classic rockers seem to qualify for.
You could defend this practice by noting that it’s not very different from the practice of inviting championship sports teams to the White House. The difference is that unlike sport, which has a limited number of defined champions, awarding medals to entertainers involves selecting winners.
And the selection of entertainers for the President’s awards has carried more than a hint of partisanship in recent years. Springsteen, Louis-Dreyfus and Mindy Kaling have all worked and raised money to vote Democrats, as has designer Vera Wang, another 2020 Medal of Arts recipient, who “worked together to create clothing in support of Joe Biden’s candidacy for… to design the presidency”.
Of Tuesday’s medalists, only one, Gladys Knight, failed to make a spectacular effort to put the man who awarded them into office. Of course, Biden isn’t the only one using these medals to reward supporters. Donald Trump presented the National Medal of Arts to Toby Keith and Jon Voight, among others.
The practice of using the presidency to bestow official state recognition on beloved (or favored) entertainers is something of an American analogue of Britain’s practice of knighting the rich and famous. But this borrowing of the trappings of monarchy while fulfilling a deep American desire to reiterate the absurd pageantry of the British monarchy we once rebelled against is also anti-republican.
The President is simply meant to be an official, no higher in social rank than any other American. We hire him to do a job for us, not to shape our culture or cultivate our tastes. Giving out presidential awards to people who no longer need them seems like a small example of how the culture of celebrity has infected public life. It’s far from the worst aspect of our government. But it’s terribly strange that no one thinks to question its purpose.
&.c, by Jonathan Chait
Irregular musings from center left.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
Comments are closed.