Until a few weeks ago, the biggest news to come out of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.

You know you’ve made a cultural impact when Henry Kissinger quotes your own joke back to you.

The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor has gone to such luminaries as Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, George Carlin and Ellen DeGeneres.

It’s going to be a “Beautiful Day” for the band U2 and four other artists when they receive this year’s Kennedy Center Honors in December.