[On July 6th,
1963, President John F. Kennedy’s
Executive Order establishing the Presidential Medal of Freedom
went into effect. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the Medals
recipients, leading up to a weekend post on the most recent, most controversial
honoree yet.]
On the Medal of
Freedom as a unifying occasion or a partisan instrument.
First things
first: I’m on record, in
this space and most everywhere else, as Bruce Springsteen’s biggest fan;
and I’m also on record in this space as significantly less
of a fan of Elvis Presley. On that latter point, Bruce and I disagree very
fully—he famously jumped
the wall at Graceland while on tour in 1976 in an attempt to meet his idol;
and Bruce has recorded no less than (and probably many more than) a
dozen covers of songs by the artist he has called one of his greatest
inspirations since he first saw Elvis’s controversial performance on
the Ed Sullivan show. I promise (Bruce, myself, you all) to keep an open
mind and keep giving Elvis the old college try, but in any case this post isn’t
about the two artists themselves; it’s about how Barack Obama’s 2016
Presidential Medal of Freedom tribute to Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump’s
2018 Medal tribute to Elvis Presley (posthumously, of course) reveal (as does
most everything else about the two presidents) two distinct and fundamentally opposed
visions of what something like the Medal of Freedom means, for the president
and for the nation.
At the November
2016 ceremony honoring Springsteen and 20 others, President Obama said of
the Medal that “it’s a tribute to the idea that all of us, no matter where we
come from, have the opportunity to change this country for the better….These 21
individuals have helped push America forward, inspiring millions of people
around the world along the way.” About Springsteen more specifically, he added,
“The stories he has told, in lyrics and epic live concert performances, have
helped shape American music and have challenged us to realize the American
dream.” As has so often been the case with Obama’s speeches and public
statements, his use of first-person plural pronouns here is crucial, establishing
the medal and occasion as a collective expression and reflection (and
amplification) of that communal experience and identity. That choice purposefully
downplays both Obama’s own individual action (despite of course being the president
giving the Presidential Medal) and the larger 21st century narrative
of a divided America whose citizens might or might not all celebrate such
figures (while it boggles my mind that anyone wouldn’t celebrate Bruce, there’s
no doubt he has become
increasingly linked to progressive politicians
and causes).
While Elvis
Presley has at times been associated with the (overstated,
I’ve argued) narrative of white artists capitalizing on black music, it
would nonetheless be easy and appropriate to present him with a posthumous
Medal of Freedom in much the same unifying terms. But it will come as no surprise
to anyone who has been alive and awake for the last five years that President
Trump did not talk about Elvis in that way shortly after awarding him that November
2018 medal. In contrast with Obama’s “we,” Trump linked Elvis to himself,
claiming that he didn’t want to sound “very conceited” but noting that, “other
than the blond hair, when I was growing up they said I looked like
Elvis. Can you believe it? I always considered that a great compliment.” And he
went on to connect Elvis to one of the moment’s most divisive issues, that of the
so-called “migrant caravan” making its way to the Mexican American border; “They're
not going to put in Elvis in there,” he stated, going out of his way to differentiate
the iconic American artist from a community he sought time and again to define
as a foreign threat to the U.S. There are literally countless ways we could
trace the changes and gaps between 2016/Obama and 2018/Trump, but their frames
for these two rock ‘n roll medals do the trick nicely.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other honorees you’d highlight?
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