A Tale of Two Centenarians, Henry Kissinger and Norman Lear

by Jack R. Johnson 12.2023

This month, two culture-changing centenarians died within a week of each other. They couldn’t be more different in their individual lives and in their effect on the world.  The first centenarian to pass was Henry Kissinger, age 100. The Rolling Stones titled his obituary with unsurprising bluntness: “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal beloved by America’s Ruling Class, finally dies.” With a little headnote, bathed in acrimony, “GOOD RIDDANCE.” 

The reason for the antipathy should not be a surprise either, for those who follow such things. According to the Stones obit, penned in fury by Spencer Ackerman, “Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon — and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion [i.e., the Khmer Rouge] — died because of Henry Kissinger.”

Ackerman elaborates, “The Yale University historian Greg Grandin, author of the biography Kissinger’s Shadow estimates that Kissinger’s actions from 1969 through 1976, a period of eight brief years when Kissinger made Richard Nixon’s and then Gerald Ford’s foreign policy as national security adviser and secretary of state, meant the end of between three and four million people. That includes “crimes of commission,” he explained, as in Cambodia and Chile, and omission, like greenlighting Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor; Pakistan’s bloodshed in Bangladesh; and the inauguration of an American tradition of using and then abandoning the Kurds.”

Hannah Arendt who famously coined the phrase ‘banality of evil’ about another mass murderer, Aldof Eichmann, missed the mark with Henry Kissinger, for whom banality was verboten. He was quite flamboyant, a playboy of sorts, dating Jill St. John (America’s first Bond Girl!), earning the moniker of Washington’s ‘Greatest Swinger,’ as well as carefully crafting an image of power broker for the elites with his so called ‘Realpolitik.’ Surprisingly, Kissinger didn’t actually like the label, “The advocates of a realist foreign policy are caricatured with the German term Realpolitik,” he sniffed in 2012, “I suppose to facilitate the choosing of sides.” But, in fact, his insistence on brutal calculations of power and persuasion are nothing if not realpolitik, and those calculations, which are designed to ignore the perspective of the hundreds of thousands of millions they might effect, are exactly the problem. 

But he’s right in one sense, realpolitik may be the wrong word for something whose outcome is so decidedly disastrous. Calamitypolitik might be closer to the mark. Maybe Kissinger never imagined the Khmer Rouge rising out of the ashes of all the mothers and children he and Nixon bombed in Cambodia, but they did, and Pol Pot’s genocidal efforts wiped out somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million Cambodians.  Kissinger was saddled with his own ideological limitations whether he wanted to admit it or not. One quote is fascinating. When he insisted on overthrowing the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile, he quipped, “I don’t see why we need to stand idly by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” Dismissive language, easy enough to toss from America’s most powerful throne, if you regularly ignore the wishes of ‘the masses.’ 

To his credit, he did help facilitate a tentative détente with Russian and even arranged a visit from Nixon to China. It’s just a shame a few million people had to die before the ceremonies could begin.

Two qualities lacking in Kissinger’s worldview, imagination and empathy, are found in abundance in the other centenarian who died recently, Norman Lear at the age of 101 (a wit on social media quipped, thank God, Lear beat him!)

One might say Lear’s entire career was about expanding perspectives and empathy. He got his start as a writer for radio and TV, and was responsible for a string of hit series in the 1970s that broke taboos on broadcast entertainment and helped define a generation. His shows routinely tackled serious social issues, some rarely seen on TV, from racism, rape and abortion to menopause, homosexuality and religion. He became a legendary television producer who created the groundbreaking series "All in the Family," "Maude," "The Jeffersons" and "One Day at a Time," to name a few.  Rumor had it he would interrupt any meeting (including a live interview on CNN) to take a phone call from his family. Even with an incredibly busy schedule, he’d always take that call from his kid. It helped keep him human, I suspect. 

"Norman Lear was a social justice warrior long before that phrase ever existed," said Laura Mackenzie Phillips, 64, who starred alongside Valerie Bertinelli and Bonnie Franklin in the hit 1970s series, One Day At A Time, which followed a single mom and her two daughters. "We were dealing with losing your virginity, birth control, Julie became a religious convert, we dealt with things nobody was talking about. If you just don't look, it's not happening. And Norman made us look." 

According to Yahoo News, Phillips also reflected on Lear's championship of women's rights and racial equality. "His ultimate goal through his work was to change the world. ... one day at a time…" Cue laughter. 

Even if the subject matter was divisive, Lear believed the audience would be bonded by humor. "To be able to laugh in a rehearsal at something you hadn't expected, and then to stand to the side or behind an audience laughing, and watch them, their bodies – a couple of hundred people as one – when something makes them laugh, I don't think I've ever seen a more spiritual moment than an audience in a belly laugh!" Lear said, "The soundtrack of my life has been laughter."

So what’s the moral of this particular comparison? Lear would probably want a wrap up, his shows always did. So, here goes: in a world over saturated with realpolitik cruelty, be the person who always takes that phone call from his kid.