As noted last week, the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. awarded its annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to 40-year-old Tina Fey, former writer/performer on Saturday Night Live (NBC) and current writer/producer/performer on 30 Rock (NBC). In the words of the producer of the televised presentation of the Twain Prize, “We’re recognizing a body of work that is important to our culture … It’s for a person whose body of work is defining of our time.”
Permit me to leave aside the basic preposterousness of awards in general, and awards for artistic achievement in particular, and acknowledge that the obvious intent of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is to put on a televised tribute to a show business personality—Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, etc.— dressed up in the kitsch-laden garments of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Call it a Dean Martin Roast for people who pay lip service to PBS. Which was done this past weekend when Ms. Fey, accompanied by former SNL colleagues and other New York/Hollywood luminaries, was presented, on a nationwide broadcast, with a bust of Mark Twain and two hours of clips and laudatory monologues.
