Norman Lear talks to Adam May

Adam May: You have had a hand in 100 television shows. You have tackled issues of racism, homophobia, gender discrimination. Did you set out to be a trailblazer?

Norman Lear: I didn't think of it so much as being a trailblazer. It was American life. We were a family of people, my family. Other people joined when we went into television. We're all members of families that read newspapers. What impacted them directly in their families was the grist for our mill. What impacted them in the outer world became grist for our mill also. We were dealing with what was.

But the issues that you talked about in these TV shows, many people never talked about publicly on television before. And they became part of the fabric of our country. They impacted our culture. When did you realize that these shows were having such big impact on us?

I realized that they were impacting the families before they were impacting the culture. It was just a question of what materials we were going to work with. Were we going to make up a story about the roast is ruined and the boss is coming to dinner? Or were we going to deal with something that took place, because our kid came home from school crying and had some problem and we realized it was our fault or whatever?

Let's start with "All in the Family," the most successful, so groundbreaking for its time. You have said that Archie Bunker's character was based on your father. Did you view your father as racist?

No, it wasn't based on my father so much as my father suggested elements of it. I was the laziest white kid my father ever met. When I told him he was putting down a race of people to call his son lazy, that's not what he was doing. He would shout at me that I was the dumbest white kid he'd ever met. So [to] that degree, when I read about Till Death Us Do Part, the British show, oh, my God. We would argue politically too, but not exactly the way Archie — you know, the takeoff point was my father's, I don't even like using the word "bigotry." He was concerned and very opinionated. He knew everything. He'd been everywhere where the grass grows green and knew everything.

What was it like to grow up in that kind of a household with someone that was so opinionated and obviously had a lot of words for you?

It wasn't easy. But I think it's generally hard to be a human being. I don't care how one was born. It is hard to be a human being, harder for many, quite obviously, across the globe, but hard in any event … just to be a human being.

You wrote in your book — I'm going to paraphrase it a little bit here — that if your father had a screw, that you could turn it a little bit maybe, help him figure out the difference between right and wrong. Your father was arrested for selling phony bonds as well. After he was serving three years in prison, that absence, I can imagine that that must've had a profound impact on you.

Well, when you're 9 years old and your father goes off and your mother sells the furniture and you're moving, you're living with an uncle and an uncle and then your grandparents and your mother and your sister — she was younger — are someplace, I don't know where — yeah, I would say that would have an effect on a kid.

Do you wish you could've turned that screw and prevented him from doing what he did?

I'd like to have done that. On the other hand, it took everything I've lived through to get to this moment. And this is a good moment. So I've got to live with — and it might as well be happily — everything that occurred to get here.

Your mother, what was she like? 

My mother — I can best illustrate my mother by telling you that when I called her at 60-something, my age, to tell her that the Academy [of Television Arts and Sciences] was just starting a Hall of Fame, and they had announced to me, secretly, the first inductees were going to be William Paley, who began CBS; David Sarnoff, who started NBC; Edward R. Murrow, the greatest perhaps of the foreign correspondents; Paddy Chayefsky; Milton Berle; Lucille Ball; and me. And I raced to the phone, called my mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, told her what I just told you. And she said, "Listen. If that's what they wanna do, who am I to say?" So that's my mother. And that should tell you everything.

I want stay with "All in the Family" for a moment. I'm a little younger. I didn't see the originals. But I watched it in reruns. I loved the show. I remember this one episode, where Archie Bunker repeatedly used the word "fag." How did you get that word past the network censors? And why feel the need to use that word so many times in one TV episode?

The feel to need the word came from the fact that that was the word that one would hear in the schoolyard, around the subway. You didn't have to know the people who were talking as they passed you in the street. And you might hear the word. So it wasn't like we were reaching for something. It was culture and the vocabulary. And we used them. 

Did that show open a conversation and a dialogue in this country that hadn't happened before?

You know what I've learned? Every episode, for people, opened a conversation. Because I go through life hearing people tell me all the time, you know, "And afterwards, we talked. We talked. We talked. My father was like that or wasn't like that. My uncle was." But people talked. And if a play is going to do anything, after it has made people laugh, the best thing is having them talk.

Let's talk about "Maude." Bea Arthur — I'm a big fan. You have a lot of admiration for Bea Arthur and her work. How did you discover her? And why was she the right person to play the role of this feminist icon?

I'll tell you how she started. The character of Maude started on "All in the Family." I told you were were reaching through our own family experience. I knew — as my family that lived at the end of their voices, at the top of their lungs and the end of their nerves — nothing, no one could hurt anybody like a relative that had an old grudge, a long-standing grudge.

Maude gets her own television show. And like "All in the Family," the issues were sometimes controversial, things that hadn't been talked about on television before. The famous issue where Maude considers having an abortion really put you in the crosshairs of the religious right. How did you handle that?

Very well. So it went on like any other show. "Let's turn on 'Maude.' We don't know what the episode is all about. Ooh, it's about abortion." That's the way the American families and American people handled it. Nothing happened. I'm sure there were some letters. But there was no big stir, because we had done a show on the subject that families lived with all the time. But after, when the show went into reruns, come April, May, by then, the religious right said, "Oh, that show is coming back. You know, they're gonna be rerunning that." Then they were ready. Then they made all the noise.

The theme song itself was controversial. It talked about God being a woman, right?

Was that controversial? Who knows? God could be a woman. I mean, it's very interesting that nobody's come back to tell us. We just don't know.

What do we know about God?

I think what people know about God comes from the way they've been raised. And I think they should honor it the way they do. But it should live within the family, within the church, within the pew, within the individual's compact.

Do we have an issue in this country right now, when it comes to religion and the infiltration it has made into our politics?

I think we have a huge problem about religion that comes from that narrow band — or bands, I should say, because it's not one band. It's those narrow bands of fundamentalists. I'm using that in the literal sense, not a religious sense, fundamentalists who believe that they know the way. And if you don't know the way, God doesn't recognize you. And you're out. Now there are many different bands who think that way. And they're entitled to it. I fought a war for that. Let them think what they wish to think. But that's the kind of thinking for the people who believe it and not insist in a country that says, "There shall be no mixture of politics and religion."

We specifically, from the Constitution forward, prohibit the mixture of politics and religion. And so religion wants to be in one's heart and soul, that compact with the Almighty. Any 200 people sitting in the same pew, reading from the same sacred text, each individual's compact is different anyway, inarticulably different.

Why did Jerry Falwell call you "enemy No. 1"?

Because I was. I was enemy No. 1 of the American family. Because I think he was foolish. I mean, what can I say about Jerry Falwell? I was the No. 1 enemy of the American family and our generation because I didn't accept God his way and because the shows that I was doing dealt with subjects that he felt should not be dealt with, like life.

You're a history buff. You owned a copy of the Declaration of Independence. What do you think the Founding Fathers would say about the television you produced?

I think the Founding Fathers would've found it very interesting, the television I produced. As a matter of fact, fathers — starting with my own — is a major theme of my life, looking for the father that, in a sense, deserted at 9 years of age. But "father" has been a very big word in my life. And I think Founding Fathers and the Declaration — that's a big, glorious bouquet in my life.

Let's talk about your organization, People for the American Way. It's 35 years ago, you founded this. The mission statement says, among other things, that "our America respects diversity, nurtures creativity and combats hatred and bigotry." Is America doing that today?

I think we have our problems in America vis-à-vis race and gender. And you know, bigotry is alive and well in the human of the species. I think it's been tamped down. Look, we've only recently seen what can be done in the LGBT cause. I mean, a civilization can take a giant leap forward, as it just did. We need a few other giant leaps forward.

What else do we need?

We certainly need in the area of race. I don't think we've settled our racial problems in this country. They still exist.

You were very hopeful that President Barack Obama would make a big impact on that issue. I've read that you're disappointed in him.

Well, I don't know in what context you read that. But in the context we're talking about, the fact of his presidency for eight years, historically, will have been, is now, a giant step forward. Talk about having made a step forward on an issue. When he was first elected, it was an amazing step forward. Now comes the LGBT. It shows that we can do it when we are of a mind.

What are your criticisms of the president?

I wanted the country to have a father. I wanted a president who would help us look in the mirror and see ourselves honestly. I wanted a president who would have the inner … he didn't need the flag pin. He just had to help us understand who we were as Americans, which is to say, my bumper sticker reads, "Just another version of you." We are just another version of everybody else. And I think he had all of the intellect and knowledge and everything else to have helped us with that. 

You're a very liberal person. Was he not liberal enough, not progressive enough?

I don't know. But I want to stick with what I was saying. The country needs a father, in every sense of the word. And a father helps you understand your own humanity, my idea of a father, who you are as a human being. We need to know who we are as Americans. And we don't have the help anywhere in the Establishment. It's not the president as an individual. But we have individuals in your media. And you know, you get asked the question, how good a job is the media doing helping a country that depends on an informed citizenry understand what it needs to understand to be led well?

Do you believe the news media is failing this country?

Yes, I do. I believe the news media goes at this level and far faster than I'm going and doesn't give us the context we need.

You served our country in World War II. You're a member of the "greatest generation." How did that impact the work you did in entertainment?

I see a difference between being in love with something and loving something. I think America loves America. I mean, Americans love America. But there was a time, after World War II, where we were in love with America. We were in love with the promises that were, that are worded in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and so forth. We were in love with all those promises. We won World War II, which was a giant, coming from nowhere and nothing, to manage to win that war. And then we invented the Marshall Plan to help Europe get on its feet. I mean, we really did a splendid job.

You were in a B-17 bomber, front lines of combat there, really. That had to shape your worldview.

It did shape my worldview, I guess. I flew 52 missions over Germany. And I don't think they could've gotten me in the plane if I hadn't lived so many lives before that. I don't know if you have the time for this … 

What do you mean?

But, you know, at 20 or 21, by the time I enlisted, I had lived a life as a kid, with my mother and father. I had lived a life with my sister. I had lived a life in nursery school, in public school. I'd lived a life in my civics class, in the chemistry club, in the stamp club. I think I'd lived, and then I lived an early life in the military. By the time they threw a flak jacket on me and the rest of the uniform and said, "Get in that plane. They're going to shoot at you in the air and from the ground." By the time that happened, I had lived so many lives that I couldn't imagine there wouldn't be more.

Did you fear death?

Yes, I feared death.

You prayed up there in a unique way. Tell me about that.

I had a picture in my back pocket of my wife [in] my wallet. And I used to touch it and touch my lips. And I don't remember what was going on in my head. But I remember I did that. Nobody's ever asked me this question. But that was kind of what I was doing. Everybody had some other little thing they were doing. And on my very first, I was due to fly several times before we actually took off because of weather. But we went through all the motions. And my greatest friend, Jimmy Edwards, also a radio operator and gunner, as I was. After our first breakfast and that first mission we were supposed to fly, we touched down after breakfast. Went to the latrine. And then it happened the second time. And as soon as it happened the second time, it was a superstition.

Like, guys wore the same clothing or the same underwear. Or they touched the picture. Or everybody had some little thing they repeated every mission. 

What is next for Norman Lear?

I'd like to do a nondenominational church service for all people who will get together to honor our common humanity and set our religions aside. Because we have killed each other enough in the name of that, in the name of religion. I'd like to be a part of seeing that happen.

You have a wide range of children right now, 60 to in their teens. What are your reflections on being a father?

I'd like to have been a better one. There was a time I had five families on the air and one, as I put it, on Mooncrest Drive. The one on Mooncrest Drive, I saw to it that the kids were fed, and they got up in the morning, they got dressed, they went to school. Sometimes I drove them. But the family on Mooncrest Drive pretty much took care of itself. The ones on television, I spent 12, 15 hours a day talking about. They needed what I was thinking just to breathe, to go through their years on television. So I was a better father at work in that sense than I was at home. Let me change the word "better" to "attentive." Because I certainly wished to be and tried to be and hoped to be at home.

Do you wish you could do that over?

I would do it better. But I don't wish I could do anything over, you know? If this is the moment that I'm enjoying, then everything it took to get here was what it took to get here. So I don't like living in regret. I see clearly I could've done better with it. If I had it to do again, would I? Yes. But I don't spend time regretting.

This interview has been edited and condensed.