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Presenting America’s Newest Comedy Team: Mel Brooks and Obama

WASHINGTON - Mel Brooks performed a bit of slapstick near the portrait of George Washington. President Obama tried his hand at stand-up comedy beside his lectern. Audra McDonald almost missed her moment on stage.

The ceremony Mr. Obama hosted on Thursday to award the nation’s highest honors for achievement in arts and the humanities was a raucous celebration in the stately East Room.

The president recognized what he called an “impressive crew” of two dozen from the worlds of art and literature, including Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records; the composer Philip Glass; the authors Sandra Cisneros and Ron Chernow; the poet Louise Glück; and the chef José Andres.

“We’ve got Terry Gross,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the host of the NPR program “Fresh Air” who is known for her questioning of celebrities and public figures, “and a whole bunch of people who Terry Gross has interviewed.”

They were at the White House to receive the National Medals of Arts and Humanities, striding one by one onto a raised stage alongside Mr. Obama, who regularly hosts such functions - most of them formal affairs that unfold according to well-rehearsed protocols.


But before attendees even took their seats on Thursday, the event took on a lighthearted air, as the United States Marine Band played a rendition of “Springtime for Hitler,” the title song of the fictional Broadway musical within Mr. Brooks’s film and stage play “The Producers.”

By the end, laughter was echoing from the room’s gilded moldings and silk damask draperies.

Maybe it was the presence of Mr. Brooks, whose knees buckled theatrically when Mr. Obama placed the large medal around his neck, sending the audience into hysterics.

“That was a joke - it’s heavy!” Mr. Brooks, 90, said later in an interview. “It must weigh five pounds.”

The president chuckled at Mr. Brooks’s routine, and teased him in return. “We’ll catch you if you sell it on eBay,” Mr. Obama said.

(Mr. Obama need not have worried, Mr. Brooks said later; he is planning to pass the medal on to his grandchildren. “In the meantime,” he added, “I’ll use it as something to put a hot cup on, so that it doesn’t burn the table.”)

For Mr. Obama, consumed this week with the serious business of terror attacks and racial unrest at home, and a crumbling cease-fire in Syria, it was a moment to let loose and reflect on the lighter side of his job.

“I can tell this is a rowdy crowd,” the president said. “Historically, this has been a much more staid affair.”

Mr. Obama improvised when the naval aide reading the official medal citations neglected to include Ms. McDonald, a six-time Tony Award winner, who exchanged glances of amusement with the president as her turn in the program’s alphabetical order passed without mention of her name.

“We skipped Audra McDonald,” Mr. Obama said quietly to the aide, as staffers shuffled papers and scrambled to locate the proper script.

“She was feeling kind of left out,” Mr. Obama said aloud as he waited, smiling impishly. “I can make up the citation if you want.”

In the end, it was not necessary, and Ms. McDonald was recognized for her “rich, soulful voice,” and for becoming one of Broadway’s brightest stars.

The jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, another honoree, could not attend the event on Thursday, Mr. Obama noted, nor could the actor Morgan Freeman, who, he said dryly, “undoubtedly is off playing a black president again. He never lets me have my moment.”

But those who were there acknowledged how fortunate they were to be among Mr. Obama’s final class of honorees.

“We were all talking about it, how cool it is that we got in while he’s still president,” Louis Menand, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Harvard professor, said in an interview.

Ms. Gross, the NPR host, said she had been thrilled to find out from Mr. Obama that he used to listen to her program “back in the days when he used to be able to drive, before he was president.”

“I just find it remarkable that he can handle all these grave situations that he handles, and also have such grace and such a sense of humor,” she said in an interview.

Mr. Obama said that he and Michelle Obama had tried to make elevating the arts and humanities a priority during their years in the White House, and that the final round of honorees reflected the nation’s diversity. The group included several artists whose work explores race and culture in America, including the historian Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times journalist; the writer James McBride; the Texas conjunto musician Santiago Jiménez Jr.; and Luis Valdez, a playwright, actor, writer and director.

“It’s an incredible confirmation of your struggle to communicate your dreams to America, and an incredible pat on the back from your country for your work,” Mr. Brooks said of the medal.

As for the wilder-than-usual ceremony, he said: “I’m probably responsible for that. I just make trouble wherever I go.”

ze new york times