Political and Cultural Activities
In addition to his success as a TV producer and businessman, Lear is an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes. The only time that he did not support the Democratic candidate for President was in 1980: he voted for John Anderson because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".
In 1981, Lear founded People For the American Way, a civil liberties advocacy organization. People For ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. In 1987, People For campaigned against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. The organization is still active.
In 1989, Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business. In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. It was later named the Norman Lear Center in recognition.
Lear serves on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He has written articles for The Huffington Post.
Lear is a trustee emeritus at The Paley Center for Media.
Read more about this topic: Norman Lear
Famous quotes containing the words political, cultural and/or activities:
“Power-worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“At times it seems that the media have become the mainstream culture in children’s lives. Parents have become the alternative. Americans once expected parents to raise their children in accordance with the dominant cultural messages. Today they are expected to raise their children in opposition to it.”
—Ellen Goodman (20th century)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)