President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal

What It Looks Like When Joan Didion Accepts an Award every bit Big every bit She Is

President Obama awarded Joan Didion, George Lucas, Tony Kushner, and 21 other writers, academics, performers and artists with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal on Wednesday. While many of the people honored take been celebrated for decades, tiny Joan Didion stole the show.

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President Obama awarded JoanDidion, George Lucas, Tony Kushner, and 21 other writers, academics, performers and artists withthe National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal on Wednesday. While many of the people honored accept been celebrated for decades, tiny Joan Didion stole the show." I'one thousand surprised she hasn't already gotten this honour," Obama said. The photos of the tall president and the diminutive writer were striking. " Didion and Obama together dyinggggggggggggg over hither,"New York's Michael Connelly tweeted."Watching the ceremony live, I worried that the medal was going to be besides heavy for her," Marker Athitakis tweeted."She's so frail. I couldn't believe it," the Washingtonian's Sophie Gilbert responded. Gilbert tweeted this photo:

BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner tweeted the hug:

Simply the ceremony wasn't simply about cute photograph ops. While many of those who fabricated the list are hardly controversial—we can all concord Lucas has contributed to the arts in a big way, and you can see a "proud George Lucas" in the photo at right—the Obama assistants also honored several writers known for works that comment on, and criticize, U.Southward. foreign and domestic policy.As the Washington Post argues, a President's selections for the medals can be seen as a political statement. The supposed liberalism of some of his nominees, withal long ago they demonstrated it, shows the president is taking "a stand in the nation's standing civilisation wars." Information technology comes as Obama has announced a few new policies to entreatment to liberals as they criticize his electric current foreign policy.

Playwright Tony Kushner, who received a National Medal of Arts, might be considered a statement-maker if focus on his earlier plays. His 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winningAngels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themesexplored AIDS during the Reagan assistants. More recently he wrote the screenplays for Munich, and a somewhat well received little biopic called Lincoln. Robert Silvers, the New York Review of Books editor receiving a National Humanities Medal, has been known to run the publication as an showcase for policy criticism. In 1967 the Review sent Mary McCarthy to Vietnam and the piece she wrote on her return was "intensely critical of the American presence in Vietnam."

The early on works of Joan Didion questioned the motives of U.Due south. foreign policy in Fundamental America with equal vigor. (The famously tiny Didion with Obama, above and at left.) Her volumeSalvador chronicled her two weeks in El Salvador in June of 1982, during the Salvadoran Civil War. In the volume, she noted the discrepancy between the U.Southward. goals and what was all-time for El Salvador:

It was not until tardily in a lunch with Deane R. Hinton, the U.s. Ambassador, "that it occurred to me that we were talking exclusively most the appearance of things, about how the situation might exist made to wait better, about trying to get the Salvadoran Authorities to 'announced' to do what the American Government needed done in order to make it 'appear' that the American aid was justified."

Thankfully, not every laurels had possibly political undertones. Author and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson was awarded, every bit was actress/playwright/MacArthur fellow Anna Deveare Smith. Herb Alpert's A&Grand records brought mariachi and Brazillian music to the American masses and Tijuana Brass gave us bang-up instrumentals like this:

( Meridian photo from the White House alive stream via Michael Connelly; photograph at left via Associated Press .)

This commodity is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/obama-honors-didion-and-others-well-their-us-policy-criticism/313443/

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