Media Alert

You might want to warm up your Internet machine to the official White House live video stream here at noon, West Coast time.

At 12 o'clock 3 PM in the East), President Obama is presenting the National Medal of Arts to a variety of honorees, including Broadway composer John Kander, who wrote such huge Broadway musicals as Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, and the song "New York, New York" from the movie of the same name.

My only question is...geez, what took them so long?!!  After all, it might have been nice for some earlier Administration to have given the medal when Kander's lyricist partner Fred Ebb was still alive!  They only been writing together for nearly half a century!  Well, better now than never.  (I chose not to say "better late" since Mr. Ebb is indeed "the late," and it's not better...)

As my friend John Kander II (his nephew) rightfully notes, both the other John Kander and Fred Ebb did receive the Kennedy Center Honor in 1998, so it's not like they've been without important national note. But still, if one is deserving of the the medal, as obviously they are, it would be nice to have done so in a timely manner.  Especially when both fellows were around to appreciate it.