Norman Lear on His Career and Activism

NORMAN LEAR, FOUNDER, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY: I think it began with a very early love of America. I was in my sophomore year at Emerson College in Boston when the Pearl Harbor was bombed. I called that afternoon to my mom in Hartford to tell her I wanted to enlist. It was reflective and urgent and she begged me, begged me and in a 3rd or 4th or 12th o’clock, she said she was absolutely die if I, there was no draft, I was enlisting freely. But she was scared to death about it. And but as I look back on it, there was a, you know, I had had I’m in college now but I had I had it seemed to me educational lifetime of civics classes. And I knew far better than today’s youth what America meant to the world, what the promises of the founding fathers met what equality and, yeah, it was it was all together unquestionable and wonderful. And then came World War II. I remember coming back and wondering if we now learn to, we were the good guys very clearly in World War II. But wondered whether —

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, I mean — yes, I’m sorry to interrupt on this, yes?

LEAR: Well, I do tend to go on. Christiane, I just want to —

AMANPOUR: I’m just trying to —

LEAR: Christiane.

AMANPOUR: I mean, you were the good guys. You snatch freedom from the jaws of fascism. And I guess what I want to ask you and Ben as well, you know, you said that you’re baffled that all these years later, in the 21st century, America, democracy and all that you fought for back then, is in such a fragile place. Norman, did you ever imagine that that would happen all these years after you fought for it?

LEAR: I never, ever imagined. I never imagined that the concerns we had at the time, People for the American Way came about. And bless Ben Jealous who’s joined us recently. And I’m talking too long. I can I haven’t heard him say anything yet. But the reason it came about was the fear of exactly what’s going on right now from the religious right. The political right, the far right.