Norman Lear celebrated his 100th birthday on Wednesday. In the 1970s, Lear was famous as a TV producer, the remarkably fecund creator of “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “The Jeffersons,” “Sanford and Son,” “Good Times,” and other classic comedy series of that decade.

Over the last four decades, however, Lear’s chief creative endeavor has been to act as a loyal Democrat pouring millions of dollars into the party’s coffers while parroting the party line anywhere he could get an audience.

In 1991, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a group dedicated to promoting the party’s platform and advancing its fortunes—although Lear himself, of course, would never put it that way.

Ever since he started PFAW, he’s been using over-the-top patriotic rhetoric to suggest that it’s not just people on the Right who love their country. Indeed, he’s often made it clear between the lines—even though he’s denied it up and down—that he regards people to his political right as bigots, knaves, and morons.

In the inevitable New York Times article that he wrote to commemorate his centenary, he referred in his usual way to “the people and country I love.” He cited his World War II service as proof that he is “a flag-waving believer in truth, justice and the American way.”