Though i have, in the past, quibbled with the Kennedy Center Honors, I won't this year too badly. If nothing else, they're redeemed by the choice of George Jones, one of the great figures of twentieth-century American popular music, and, astonishingly, still recording great albums. I could do without Barbra Streisand, of course. I still remember working at a record store in the late seventies: for a few weeks all anyone wanted was the amazing collaboration between Barbra and Barry Gibb - the LP "Guilty." (The title track won the Grammy for best song, which tells you all you need to know about the Grammys.) The record is now completely forgotten, which is an inspiring example of the human capacity to repress the memory of soul-devouring pain and unspeakable evil and somehow, beyond hope or reason, to go on. Indeed, there's not a single Streisand song I wouldn't delete from my head, supposing they ever got there. I'd rather be a charred monkey in somebody's luggage than hear "The Way We Were" or "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" again. I'm not that big on the Who either, who as I'm sure was said in the various fulsome tributes, were the inventors of the rock opera, a mistake if ever there was one. But you know, they got George, so what the hell.