Norman Lear

Norman Lear rewired the American sitcom by putting real political and social argument inside it -- All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, and The Jeffersons all built comedy out of subjects the genre had avoided, from racism to abortion to class. He created more than 100 shows over a seventy-year career, won six Primetime Emmys and the National Medal of Arts, and in 1980 founded People for the American Way, an advocacy group countering the era's Christian right.