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Martin Kaplan, research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, holds the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society. He has been a White House speechwriter; a Washington journalist; a deputy presidential campaign manager; a Disney studio executive; a motion picture and television producer and screenwriter; and a radio host.

He graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in molecular biology, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon, president of the Signet Society, and on the editorial boards of the Harvard Crimson and Harvard Advocate. As a Marshall Scholar, he received a First in English from Cambridge University in England. As a Danforth Fellow, he received a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.

He was a program officer at the Aspen Institute; executive assistant to U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest L. Boyer; chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale; deputy op-ed editor and columnist for the Washington Star; visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution; and a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and on the CBS Morning News. As deputy campaign manager of the Mondale presidential race, he was in charge of policy, speechwriting, issues, and research. He worked at Disney for 12 years,
both as a studio vice president in live-action feature films, and as a
writer-producer under exclusive contract.


He has credits on The Distinguished Gentleman, starring Eddie Murphy, which he wrote and executive produced; Noises Off, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which he adapted for the screen; and Max Q, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for ABC.

He has hosted So What Else Is News?, a nationally-syndicated program on Air America Radio, which examines media, politics and pop culture. He has also been a regular commentator on the business of entertainment on the public radio program Marketplace.

Since 2008 he has been a weekly columnist at The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.

He is editor of The Harvard Lampoon Centennial Celebration
1876-1973
; co-author (with Ernest L. Boyer) of Educating for
Surviva
l; and editor of The Monday Morning Imagination, and What Is An Educated Person?.

The Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School, which Kaplan directs, is a research, public policy, and advocacy center exploring the impact of entertainment on society.

Blog Entries by Marty Kaplan

I Got the Broadcast Blues

15 Comments | Posted March 15, 2010 | 12:11 PM (EST)


Local TV news is the number one source of news for Americans. Seventy-eight percent of the country turns to it to find out what's going on. The Internet may be growing as a news source, and some people still read the paper, but for most people, what's on...

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The Lies and Reconciliation Commission

126 Comments | Posted March 2, 2010 | 06:47 AM (EST)


If Democrats decide to use the procedural move that Congress calls "reconciliation" to pass health care reform, get ready for a war of words. It will be won not by the biggest guns, but the biggest mouths. What's true won't matter; what's loudest, what's catchiest, will. That's democracy in the...

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Side Effects Include Denial

81 Comments | Posted February 16, 2010 | 12:31 PM (EST)


Why would Pfizer spend $100 million on two-minute TV ads that use a minute of that time admitting that their drug Chantix can cause "changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood," "weird, unusual or strange dreams," and "suicidal thoughts or actions"?

Because they have to, and because it doesn't matter....

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Why Are Republicans Better Storytellers?

81 Comments | Posted January 21, 2010 | 09:37 AM (EST)


Democrats make lousy narrators.

If you're a movement conservative -- the only kind of Republican in the media, which means the only kind of Republican who exists -- then everything that happens can be explained by the same simple story:

Once upon a time, there was a free market....

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Thank You, Norman Lear

3 Comments | Posted January 19, 2010 | 10:22 AM (EST)


It's just about perfect that the week that LA Gang Tours launches is also the tenth anniversary of the start of the Norman Lear Center.

At $65 a head, lunch included, the LA Gang Tours bus trip through South Central is cheaper than...

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Mercury Is Poison

41 Comments | Posted January 4, 2010 | 05:02 PM (EST)


Now that we're about to entrust health reform to the tender mercies of the insurance industry, it's sobering to see the skullduggery that one of California's largest auto insurers is trying to pull on the state's drivers.

If you want a preview of what health insurers may do to premiums...

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Barack Obama Is a Traitor

117 Comments | Posted December 14, 2009 | 06:13 PM (EST)


Barack Obama is a traitor.

That's what Dick Cheney said. Too bad Tiger Woods stepped on the story.

The decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York, Cheney said on the eve of Obama's speech on Afghanistan, is "likely to give encouragement -- aid and comfort --...

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Lord of the Gingers

49 Comments | Posted November 30, 2009 | 02:06 PM (EST)


Now that our nation has observed "Kick a Ginger Day" and "Kick a Jew Day," can "Kick a Liberal Day" be far behind?

In case you've been taking a tryptophan nap, a Los Angeles County sheriff's investigation has found that at least four redheaded girls and three redheaded boys...

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Bra Helps Fight Breast Cancer

9 Comments | Posted November 16, 2009 | 02:18 PM (EST)


Now that CNN has put Lou Dobbs out to pasture, you'd think that The Most Trusted Name in News would make the reporting of facts -- you know, the practice formerly known as journalism -- the hallmark of its brand. Dream on.

This past Saturday, morning hosts Betty Nguyen and...

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If You Liked Health Care, You'll Love Afghanistan

8 Comments | Posted November 2, 2009 | 04:19 PM (EST)


If you're depressed by the way the national debate about health care has been playing out, just wait until the rubber hits the road on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. If you're enraged by the way Wall Street's rescue has made us hostages to their recklessness, get ready for how...

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Balloon Dad to Pose for Playgirl

26 Comments | Posted October 19, 2009 | 02:02 PM (EST)


It's my own fault, I know, for watching Showbiz Tonight over the weekend, but I couldn't find the news on any other channel, and I'd forgotten that HLN, better known as CNN's Headline News, had turned its definition of journalism over to Nancy Grace, host of "television's only justice themed/interview/debate...

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How Would the Right Know It's Wrong?

248 Comments | Posted October 5, 2009 | 01:00 PM (EST)


While the left despairs of Barack Obama's capitulation to K Street and Wall Street, the right continues to insist that he's a Marxist, socialist, communist enemy of capitalism. What could possibly convince the right that it's wrong -- about that, or anything else?

Not the press. The right gets its...

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I Want to Know What Happens Next

Posted September 21, 2009 | 05:28 PM (EST)


Something's going to happen next week, or next year, that will completely change the story.

Maybe it'll be an earthquake -- a literal one, the 7.8 that seismologists are urgently warning Californians to get ready for, and a figurative Big One that divides millions of people's lives into Before and...

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The 60 Questions of Our Life

Posted September 14, 2009 | 08:17 AM (EST)


"Curiosity: The Questions of Our Life" is the name of a new 60-episode five-year "landmark" series just announced with much fanfare by the Discovery Channel.

So what are those 60 "fundamental questions and underlying mysteries of our time"? They're looking for nominations.

Princeton, Georgetown and Syracuse...

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Kumbaya, Not Kevorkian, Will Kill Grandma

Posted August 24, 2009 | 01:59 PM (EST)


I don't know which is more dispiriting: the New York Times' failure to call Betsy McCaughey a liar, or Barack Obama's failure to call Chuck Grassley a liar. It's tempting to think of both failures as cowardice, a mortal fear of being branded "liberal." But ironically it's liberalism itself that...

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Smile! You're on Deather Camera!

Posted August 10, 2009 | 02:54 PM (EST)


I keep hoping that the health care "debate" we're having this summer will turn out to be just a plot point in the 2009 version of The Truman Show, the movie where Jim Carrey's character, Truman Burbank, discovers that what he thought was reality is actually a reality television show.

...
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Mobs R Us?

Posted August 3, 2009 | 06:36 PM (EST)


There's a direct line connecting the khaki-wearing "citizen" mob sent from Washington by the GOP to stop the 2000 recount in Florida, to the teabaggers dispatched by the corporate front group FreedomWorks to disrupt congressional town halls.

Whether at the beginning of the decade or its end,...

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The Best Speech I Ever Wrote

Posted July 30, 2009 | 12:54 PM (EST)


Elie Wiesel wagged a bony finger at me. "History will be watching you, young man," he warned. We were on the tarmac at Geneva International Airport, and yes, I was a young man, not yet 29, though after the week I'd just been through, I felt the age I am...

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My Daughter, the Best-Selling Novelist

Posted July 27, 2009 | 01:37 PM (EST)


By the way, have I mentioned that my 19-year-old daughter's novel is a bestseller? Hancock Park by Isabel Kaplan has now made it onto the Los Angeles Times hardback fiction bestseller list for two weeks running.

If I haven't already buttonholed you - or emailed, Facebooked, Twittered, phoned...

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Cheney Meant Well

Posted July 13, 2009 | 12:41 PM (EST)


It's grasping at straws, I know, but I'm looking for a benign explanation of the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration.

Criminal law says that facts aren't enough to establish guilt. There also has to be mens rea -- a guilty mind. Crooks don't just perform illegal acts;...

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