Honor Dishonor

President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to nineteen distinguished people this past weekend, including former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S, Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC), former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Phil Donahue former Vice President Al Gore (below), civil rights activist Clarence B. Jones, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, astronomy scientist and James Webb Space Telescope director Jane Rigby, and actress Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian-American to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Yeah, so what?

Don't get me started on the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Thanks to Donald Trump, the award is worthless and is not worth the metal it's minted on.   

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded by the President of the United States "for especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."  Alas, it's been given to people who meet or met none of those criteria,  such as 1993 recipient Strom Thurmond, who received the award from outgoing President George H.W. Bush and was, as we all remember, a segregationist.  It was tarnished even more when it turned out that Bill Cosby, a 2002 recipient of the award (from Bush 43), had drugged and raped a few women. Well, fifty-nine of them.  A 2016 effort to revoke Cosby's award in Congress went nowhere, and there is still no method to revoke it.

Too bad, because Trump rendered the Presidential Medal of Freedom utterly meaningless when he gave the award to Rush Limbaugh in 2020 - ostensibly for his commitment to free speech, the right to which he used to dismiss women's rights activists as "feminazis" and dismiss President Obama as "Barack, the Magic Negro."  He then compounded the medal's meaninglessness by awarding the medal to House Republicans Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes, two of his MAGA minions.  Furthermore, he cheapened the award with some of his posthumous awarding of the medal to Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth.  Worthy honorees, yes, but then you realize that Trump only awarded them the Medal of Freedom to satiate his base; he posthumously awarded the medal to Presley to appease old-time Elvis fans who lived to see rock and roll decline and see women (especially Beyoncé)  become the most popular singers of today, which they don't like, and he gave it to Ruth to appease old-time baseball fans still angry at a black man - Hank Aaron - for breaking the Babe's home-run record. 

Perhaps it's time to admit that we Americans don't do cultural honors very well compared to, say, European countries, because we don't do culture very well.  The European countries have cultural heritages going back centuries that their artists, scientists and statesmen embody today; our cultural heritage, in the Big Bang scheme of things, only goes back to last week.  Therefore, we don't have too many people worthy of an honor that recognizes contributions to the national interest (whatever that is), world peace (we've been at war for most of our 248-year history), or cultural endeavors (we've already discussed Bill Cosby).  The award was created by President Kennedy, who also has a cultural center in Washington named for him (forget for a moment JFK's preference for show tunes over symphonies,and for Ian Fleming over William Shakespeare)  that bestows honors on such highbrow performing artists such as the rapper legally known as Dana Owens, apparently for playing an extension of herself in a TV role that allows her to beat the crap out of lots of white guys at once.  

I've long since conceded that this is a country made for Madonna, not Mozart or Mussorgsky, and for Kiss's Destroyer, not Strauss's Die Fledermaus, just as our politics are no longer made for people like Tim Ryan but for people like Tim Scott, and just as our most respected scientists are not paleontologists but creationists.  Official honors like the Kennedy Center Honors need not go on, just as the Presidential Medal of Freedom need not go on . . . especially when, in the event of another Trump Administration, there won't be any freedom to represent with a medal.