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On Tuesday, December 5th, Norman Lear died at the Great Old Age of 101.

All the superlatives you've been reading about his contributions to television

are justified.

He fused comedy with social commentary in a way no one had before on TV and here's the wonder of it all

He kept it funny. There was nothing eat your spinach about his shows. If you heard

our season two episode on television's rural purge of the early 1970s, you know how

insulated from the real world television was until then.

No one changed that more than Norman Lear by bringing in stories and characters that audiences hadn't seen on TV or oftentimes in their

own lives. His shows weren't so much progressive as they were humane and did I mention they were funny? On a personal note, I became friends with

Norman through his son-in-law, CBS News, chief medical correspondent, and my friend, Dr. John Lepook. I'll always be grateful to have known

Norman to be able to witness how much his family adored him and to have stood around a piano with him on New Year's Eve 2019 singing

I'll be seeing you. What a conscience what a heart.

Here's an abbreviated version of an interview I did with Norman in 2015 at the Austin Film Festival, where he was being honored not long after his memoir was released.

I can't think of any scripted comedies

that generate the kind of discussion that your shows did back in the

70s and 80s.

Is television doing something wrong? No, I think the kind of discussion you referred to that we generated, that may not be generated now,

has more to do with the fact that we were new at the time and there were only three networks.

So you were either going to watch the Roasters Roomb and the boss is coming to dinner over here.

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