Norman Lear no one to laugh about


On 8/22, MSNBC's Ali Velshi conducted a remarkably tender interview with fellow Trump-hater Norman Lear. 

Lear, having gotten wealthy several times over from creatively inadequate television product, now lives the life of a gentlemen radical and insists on wearing a too-small fishing hat that reminds of Pinky Lee.

The MSNBC spotlight fell on Lear that day because of the upcoming Kennedy Center Awards. President Trump had announced he would not attend. Lear had already broadcast his intention to skip the event, so abiding was his loathing of the President of the United States.

Lear claimed, in his exchange with Velshi, that "art" was important to him. But critical consideration of Lear's vandalistic oeuvre inspires abundant doubt.

I grew up in the 60s, religiously watching and loving genuinely funny, escapist television comedies like the Andy Griffith show, Green Acres, the Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, Mayberry RFD, and Petticoat Junction. Too, I prized reruns of early legends like the Honeymooners and Phil Silvers Show.

Those were examples of fine, effective entertainment, masterfully written programs packed with colorful characters and side-splitting scenarios. Their producers understood that viewers -- having put in full workdays, dealing with obnoxious co-workers and confronting the various unpleasantries and full-blown social and political storms of the Larger World -- collapsed into their living room chairs, kicked off their shoes, and turned the channel dial toward comfort, not renewed stress. Entertainment, not finger-wagging ideological proselytization.

Those were the days. But nothing gold can stay.

In came annoyingly didactic Norman Lear, who devilishly mixed agit-prop with the punchlines. His foul brew became the pixelated standard. And, as is generally the case with revolutions, that which already stood was leveled to make space for the newer fancy.

Networks were suddenly obsessed with demographics, deriding the heartland in favor of urban attentions. (Veteran actor Pat Buttram -- "Mr. Haney," on Green Acres -- would say of CBS: "They canceled everything with a tree.") Networks purged from broadcast schedules truly entertaining fare that asked nothing more of viewers than that they enjoy good laughs. 

Suddenly, though, humorousness wasn't enough for comedy TV.

As now cast by the odious Norman Lear method, shows needed to be socially and politically 'relevant,' as defined by liberalism, and always reflective of its precepts. That more than a few innocent viewers who'd tuned in hoping only for amusement were instead insulted, their faiths and values mocked, was of no consequence to the Lears. 

Contempt, then, is well deserved by popular culture despoiler Lear. His wealthy, Hollywood liberal sort counsels social and political theoretical notions whose consequences we common people must suffer with -- while they loll and frolic in sumptious, wall-surrounded mansions, with armed, private armies ensuring the 'riff raff' who watch their shows and movies are never allowed human contact.

All of which are valid points. Though Lear, MSNBC, and Ali Velshi will never admit them.