Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. As a political activist, he founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way in 1981 and has supported First Amendment rights and progressive causes...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Producer
Date of Birth27 July 1922
CityNew Haven, CT
CountryUnited States of America
Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.
Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.
Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.
When I want to entertain entertainers, I call Jason Randal!
You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
We got ratings. It isn't that they won't quarrel with you, or say you're always right. But as long as you stay strong and the ratings are good and you're reasonable - I don't think we fought unreasonably. We basically won that right.
I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.
That's the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.
The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.
Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.
I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.
In this nation, leadership is dollars.
In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.
But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.