{"id":11111,"date":"2023-12-10T21:04:20","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T21:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11111"},"modified":"2024-01-09T11:48:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T11:48:08","slug":"norman-lear-told-me-i-hate-the-word-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11111","title":{"rendered":"Norman Lear told me, ‘I hate the word satire’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 American TV producer Norman Lear was heralded as a leading light in political satire but he did not believe it. \u2018I hate the word satire,\u2019 he told me, \u2018because I don\u2019t know that the level of our work on television is true satire.\u2019<\/p>\n

I spoke to Lear, who died on Dec. 5 aged 101, in 1992 when he was executive producer of a series called \u2018The Powers That Be\u2019 about a hapless U.S. senator played by John \u00a0Forsythe (pictured). It lasted for twenty-one episodes unlike his previous hits such as \u2018All in the Family\u2019, \u2018The Jeffersons\u2019 and \u2018Maude\u2019.<\/p>\n

For a story in the Los Angeles Times, I asked Lear where political humour stood in comparison to times gone by. \u2018I don\u2019t see any except for Gary Trudeau,\u2019 he said. \u2018I don\u2019t know that any of us on television are doing any really forceful political humour. I think you guys who talk to us about this are indulging us; helping us feel we are doing som really crusading political humour. I haven\u2019t seen any evidence of it, certainly not in my work. I hope to get there but I cannot honestly say that we\u2019ve done anything with a cutting edge like what I hear about the British series \u201cYes, Minister\u201d.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With Bill Clinton then about to enter the White House, I asked hin if it was easier to lampoon Republicans than Democrats. \u2018The senator we\u2019ve conceived is not a Republican, he\u2019s a Democrat,\u2019 he said. \u2018He was conceived at the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings where we saw an array of empty suits, Democrats and Republicans; men who were totally befuddled; totally out of the mainstream; having no connection with the culture let alone with women. He is any one of those guys in suits that we watched mishandling Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas.\u2019<\/p>\n

He had found as much fault with his own party as with Republicans, he said, amd the challenge in terms of comedy was the same. \u2018It isn\u2019t just the administration of the presidency, it\u2019s the entire culture,\u2019 he said. \u2018We are a culture obsessed with short-term thinking. I don\u2019t see anything happening that\u2019s going to stop that. We have a press that\u2019s enslaved to the quarterly profit statement and corporations totally captivated by short-term thinking. I don\u2019t know that I have given vent to the anger I feel about these things. The truth is that I haven\u2019t and I don\u2019t know what would happen if I did. It\u2019s worth thinking about. I am going to try.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 American TV producer Norman Lear was heralded as a leading light in political satire but he did not believe it. \u2018I hate the word satire,\u2019 he told me, \u2018because I don\u2019t know that the level … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[5431,5429,5433,5432,5430],"class_list":["post-11111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-john-forsythe","tag-norman-lear","tag-political-humoiur","tag-all-in-the-family","tag-the-powers-that-be"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11123,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11111\/revisions\/11123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}