At the Kennedy Center, Conan O’Brien gets honoured, and the Trump jokes are plentiful

Washington: In honouring Conan O’Brien at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, a lineup of big-name comedians made the veteran late-night host and comedy fixture the main focus of roasting — but President Donald Trump and his recent takeover of the Washington arts center quickly became the second-favorite target of the night.

John Mulaney joked that the Kennedy Center would soon be renamed “The Roy Cohn Pavilion for Big Strong Men Who Love ‘Cats.’” Stephen Colbert, who makes Trump a nightly target on his late-night show, announced two new Kennedy Center board members: “Bashar al-Assad and Skeletor.” Will Ferrell complained that he did not have time to be there because he was “supposed to be shutting down the Department of Education.”

When David Letterman took the stage late in the show to give O’Brien the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, his nod to the upheaval in Washington was more solemn.

“In history for all time,” he said, “this will have been the most entertaining gathering of the resistance, ever.”

O’Brien is among more than two dozen comic performers and writers to receive the award since its inception. No other ceremony came at a time of such upheaval at the institution.

The event was the first major award program at the Kennedy Center since Trump purged the institution’s historically bipartisan board, ousted its top leaders and installed himself as chair. He has taken aim at the organisation’s programming, vowing to get rid of “woke” influences and “anti-American propaganda.”

O’Brien has long been wary of venturing too deeply into politics in his comedy, and he did not speak directly about the Trump administration. In one of the loudest applause lines of the night, he did thank the recently deposed Kennedy Center board chair and president.

“My thanks to the people who invited me here, several months ago: David Rubenstein and Deborah Rutter,” he said. “I don’t know why they aren’t here tonight. I lost Wi-Fi in January. I’m guessing they’re in traffic.”

Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade, announced O’Brien’s selection for the award in January, shortly before Trump’s inauguration. Weeks later, she was ousted, along with the center’s longtime chair, financier David M. Rubenstein.

Since he took office and installed his loyalists at Kennedy Center, Trump has begun to seek more sway in the selection of artists and performers to be recognised at the institution’s most prominent annual event — the Kennedy Center Honors program — telling the board that “radical-left lunatics” had been chosen in the past. In recent weeks, a number of artists canceled planned appearances and resigned positions associated with the center.

Most of the show was an ode — sometimes raunchy, sometimes earnest — to O’Brien, as comedians recounted the ups and downs of his career, shared how he had shaped their own, and relived his best bits (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and The Interrupter made appearances).

In one segment, Colbert paid tribute to his peer in late-night television by participating in his own miniature episode of the talk show “Hot Ones.” The show’s host, Sean Evans, was on hand to ask questions about O’Brien while Colbert ate chicken wings doused in increasingly spicy hot sauces.

“I just want to start by saying, in light of the new leadership at the Kennedy Center, all of these are <em>right </em>wings,” Colbert said, gesturing to the chicken on a table in front of him. “And a couple of them are truly insane.”

O’Brien has made his distaste for Trump clear, but he has chosen to make him the butt of his jokes far less frequently than his peers.

When he hosted the Academy Awards this month, he made one veiled jab at Trump, but mostly kept his jokes in the realm of the absurd and the silly rather than the political. Before the awards, he told The New York Times that “however anyone voted should not be a prerequisite for whether you enjoy the show.” (His performance was a success, and he was quickly asked back to host next year’s telecast.)

Taking the stage after Letterman’s introduction, O’Brien marveled at his circumstances, nearly four decades after he was rejected from a writing job on Letterman’s “Late Night” talk show. He grew serious and reflective when talking about Twain, the award’s namesake.

“Twain was suspicious of populism, jingoism, imperialism, the money-obsessed mania of the Gilded Age and any expression of mindless American might or self-importance,” he said, noting that “he loved America but knew it was deeply flawed.”

O’Brien quickly returned to the silliness, dancing and playing guitar onstage with more than a dozen people dressed like Mark Twain.

The Mark Twain Prize presentation is scheduled to stream on Netflix on May 4.