Yesterday, Norman Lear died, at 101. He’s responsible for many of the best sitcoms of the 1970s, including All in the Family, One Day at a Time, and The Jeffersons. Lear gave us what we hadn’t really had before: working class characters, frank discussion of social issues, and families of color in the spotlight.
Maude featured a married woman who had an abortion; Archie Bunker had to accept that one of his friends was queer well before the famous “coming out” tv episodes of the 1990s.
Naturally, The Simpsons owes Lear a debt, something they acknowledged years ago, when they had Homer and Marge sing the All in the Family theme song:
