Happy 99th birthday Norman Lear!
Norman Lear: As I begin my 100th year, I’m Norman Lear: As I begin my 100th year, I’m baffled that voting rights are still under attack
I woke up today at the start of my 100th year as a citizen of this beautiful, bewildering country. I am proud of the progress we’ve made in my first 99 years, and it breaks my heart to see it undermined by politicians more committed to their own power than the principles that should bind us together. Frankly, I am baffled and disturbed that 21st-century Americans must still struggle to protect their right to vote.
I am a patriot, and I will not surrender that word to those who play to our worst impulses rather than our highest ideals. When the United States entered World War II, I dropped out of college to fight fascism. I flew 52 missions with a crew in a B-17, dropping bombs 35 times. Unlike so many others, I returned from that war safely, to another 70-plus years of life, love, family, failure and triumph.
It’s very likely that I owe my ass and all those decades of human experience to that Black and Brown squadron of Red Tail P-51 fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee airmen. When we saw their red tails coming to escort us, we all felt a bit safer.
Yet when these courageous men returned to the United States, they returned to racism, segregation and discrimination. Their heroism did not shield them from the indignities and violence of Jim Crow. I can only imagine the depth of the betrayal the airmen must have felt, but it did not prevent many of them from accomplishing great things.
I think often of the congresswoman Barbara Jordan. She will always be remembered for declaring during President Richard M. Nixon’s impeachment hearings, “My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.” Even now, it gives me chills to think of her saying that, as a Black woman, in the face of her own experiences of prejudice and her full knowledge of our history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/27/norman-lear-99th-birthday/
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