President Joe Biden, on a West Coast fundraising swing, attended a shiva to mourn Norman Lear, who died this week at age 101.
Biden attended the shiva at the Lear residence, according to Reuters. The president and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime friend of Lear’s, also paid tribute to him at a Hollywood-centric fundraiser for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign.
The president paid tribute to Lear as a “transformational force in American culture,” and also noted his decades of political advocacy, saying that he “fought directly for free speech, a woman’s right to choose, the environment, voting rights, and more.” Lear’s political impact went well beyond the influence of his shows.
In the early 1980s, he founded People for the American Way, an advocacy group that countered the emerging power of the religious rights.
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