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Washington Post Staff Writer

2009 Kennedy Center Honors

The great thing about the Kennedy Center Honors show isn't the honorees themselves -- though they're pretty great, or they wouldn't be honorees in the first place -- but the kind of high-low cultural mash-ups that celebrate their life's work. The nearly three-hour performance is like the world's most glittering variety revue, the best "Ed Sullivan Show" ever.

In one made-for-TV evening Sunday night at the Kennedy Center, you got: a mini-opera recital, a madcap Broadway medley, a rock and jazz concert and a whole bunch of famous and accomplished people who've probably never encountered each other before and likely won't again. Jack Black and Aretha Franklin? Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eddie Vedder? Yeah.

With the five rainbow-ribbon-bedecked honorees -- Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen -- sitting next to the president and Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the first row of the mezzanine, the Kennedy Center rolled out the tributes in song, dance, film and speeches..........

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