Conan O’Brien on Attending Kennedy Center Event: I Will Be Here Specifically to Honor Mark Twain

EXCERPT:

O'BRIEN: "Yeah, it’s a personal decision, what everybody wants to do, but my decision was that there’s a lot of people that work here at the Kennedy Center who’ve been here for a very long time, they work hard to promote the arts, and so I want to be here in that spirit. And I think a lot of my friends agree that this is -- the Kennedy Center has been here. I know that it was, I believe, conceived under the Eisenhower Administration, and then obviously they start to build it during John F. Kennedy’s Administration. Think about how many presidents have been here. Our country has been through many different sea changes, and my thought is, I will be here specifically to honor Mark Twain and the people that this award stands for, and also all the young people — young, old, middle-aged — that have worked here at the Kennedy Center for a long time. This is their livelihood. So, that was my thinking and it’s an incredible honor to be here. And as a Irish kid from Brookline, Massachusetts, which is where John F. Kennedy was born, and a former member of the Kennedy Library Board, this is a massive honor to be here at this institution.”

nick@nickballasy.com