Honoree Conan O’Brien Never Mentioned Trump. He Let Twain Do All the Talking.
The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was held Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that is now under the chairmanship of President Trump. The honoree chose to use Twain’s words instead of Trump jokes to mark the occasion.
Honoree Conan O’Brien, who isn’t known as a political comic, stayed true to form Sunday night by never mentioning Trump and letting Twain do the talking. “Twain is alive, vibrant and vitally relevant today,” O’Brien said slyly.
“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,” O’Brien pointed out. “Above all, Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He loved America, but knew it was deeply flawed. Twain wrote: ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it.’”
Twain’s enduring power stems from core principles that shaped his comedy. “First and foremost, Twain hated bullies,” O’Brien said, noting the famous humorist populated his works with them, and made his readers hate them.
O’Brien said Twain was allergic to hypocrisy, loathed racism and empathized with former enslaved people struggling during Reconstruction, immigrant Chinese laborers in California and European Jews fleeing antisemitism.
What does that have to with comedy? “It has everything to do with comedy,” O’Brien said. “I have loved all my life comedy that is self-critical, deflating and dedicated to the proposition that we are all flawed, absurd and wallowing in the mud together.
Mark Twain and the Kennedy Center
O’Brien, 61, is the 26th recipient of the Mark Twain Prize, and potentially the last to be honored at the Kennedy Center. The announcement of his selection came three weeks before Trump ousted longtime president Deborah Rutter and board chairman David Rubenstein and dismissed the board of trustees replacing them with loyalists, who elected him as chairman.
The closest O’Brien came to taking a whack at Trump was to thank Rubenstein, Rutter and the Kennedy Center staff, which drew an extended round of applause. “I don’t know why they’re not here,” O’Brien teased. “I lost Wi-Fi in January. I’m guessing they’re in traffic.”
In one of the set-up bits at the event, comedic actor John Mulaney teased, “It’s an honor to be here at the Kennedy Center, or as it will be known next week, the Roy Cohn Pavilion for Big Strong Men who Love ‘Cats.’”
Jason Zinoman, who reported on the ceremony for The New York Times, said O’Brien recognized the moment called for something different than a series of Trump jokes.
“In this political moment, at a time when academic institutions and prestigious law firms have buckled under pressure from the administration, demanded something different, and O’Brien went for more than just a laugh,” Zinoman wrote. “His was a political argument wrapped inside an artistic one.”
Mark Twain and the Presidency
Twain and the presidency weren’t strangers. Twain and President Ulysses S. Grant were close-enough friends that Grant sought his advice on his memoirs and collaborated with Twain on its publication and door-to-door sales. Twain proofread Grant’s manuscript as rapidly as possible so the book could be published before Grant died in 1885.
Grant’s Personal Memoirs was an instant bestseller, remains on bookshelves today and is considered by critics as the best memoir written by any former President.
The friendship between Twain and Grant reflected mutual admiration. Twain, who already was considered a national treasure, had ties to the abolitionist movement and befriended Frederick Douglas and was a neighbor of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Connecticut.
Twain appreciated Grant signing the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote and the 18th President’s efforts to suppress the KKK in southern states. He also established Yellowstone as the first national park.
Mark Twain and President Trump
If their lifetimes overlapped, Twain and Trump would be unlikely friends.
Twain was a passionate critic of U.S. imperialism during President McKinley’s military adventure in the Philippines. “I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines,” Twain said. “We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.”
Twain wrote The War Prayer, which denounced war as contrary to Christian morality. His work went unpublished until the Vietnam War when activists discovered and published it.
Twain’s views more than 100 years ago made him a progressive radical. He joined the International Typographical Union when he worked as a printer and proclaimed himself a union man until his death in 1910.
He was married to a liberal activist that brought him into regular contact with socialists, atheists and activists for social equality and women’s rights. Twain wrote, “Lincoln’s Proclamation not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also.” He condemned racism toward Chinese laborers brought to America to build railroads.
Twain strongly favored women’s suffrage. “I should like to see the time come when women shall help to make the laws. I should like to see that whiplash, the ballot, in the hands of women.”
