“Vice President Harris, Second Gentleman, former president Selina Meyer, welcome to the White House,” declared Joe Biden today, opening a ceremony in the Executive Mansion for the 2021 National Medals of Arts and the 2021 National Humanities Medals recipients. “A sacred place for many reasons, it’s the residence of the First Family, but it is really the people’s house,” the real-life POTUS added.
Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus was among “23 extraordinary Americans,” as Biden described them, being publicly awarded the honors Tuesday in a star-studded East Room gathering, first announced yesterday. Praising “my friend President Julia Louis-Dreyfus,” the 46th President made a point of noting that “she embraces life’s absurdity with absolute wit.”
“I’m going to talk to Julia later about whether she liked being VP or President better,” the former 47th VP quipped. Of course, even with multiple Emmy winner Veep’s 2019 conclusion, Biden and JLD/Meyer have a long history on and off the screen, fictional and factual. Even with the actor’s appearance at the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, it is a relationship perhaps best exemplified by a video the duo made for the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the freedoms and limitations of the office John Nance Garner once said wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm piss.”
Check out that pedal to the metal WHCD video here:
As well as the fictional ex-POTUS, Bruce Springsteen, José Feliciano, the “Empress of soul” Gladys Knight, Mindy Kaling, Antonio Martorell-Cardona, Judith Francisca Baca, Fred Eychaner, Joan Shigekawa and Vera Wang, along with organizations the Billie Holiday Theatre and the International Association of Blacks in Dance received the National Medal of Arts today.
In his speech before the pandemic delayed awards were formally placed on the recipients shoulders, Biden gave The Office alum Kaling a shout out for her “irreverence and sincerity” as an actor, writer and producer. Never hesitant to roll out some homespun appreciation of his hometown, the frequently ad-libbing President also joked to Cambridge, MA-born Kaling that “Scranton, Pennsylvania made her who she is.”
The National Humanities Medals for 2021 went to Just Mercy writer and justice advocate Bryan Stevenson; poet Richard Blanco; anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole; historian Earl Lewis; educator Henrietta Mann; authors Walter Isaacson, Ann Patchett, Amy Tan, Tara Westover; and call-in show Native America Calling, and Underground Railroad author Colson Whitehead today.
“I’m kinda looking for back-to-back myself, Biden said to massive cheers after noting attendee Whitehead is “one of the first and only novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for back-to-back works.
The 80-year old POTUS has yet to officially announce he is running for reelection. However, with comments from the First Lady, and the VP and hints from Biden himself the past few months, another bid for the White House from Biden is as close to a sure bet as you can get in DC.
Feliciano and Elton John, who garnered his medal last fall at a White House concert, were not in attendance at the Executive Mansion this afternoon. In a Hollywood heavy schedule for the Tinseltown favored Biden, Tuesday’s ceremony comes one day after the president welcomed Jason Sudeikis and the main cast of Ted Lasso to the White House.
“You do make the country better,” President Biden said today in that vein to all the honorees after all the medals were awarded, “you make it a better place.”