Who guest voiced Benjamin Franklin in I'm a Little Bit Country?

Norman Lear guest voiced Benjamin Franklin in “I’m a Little Bit Country.”

Lear appears as the voice of Franklin during Cartman’s imagined trip to colonial Philadelphia. The episode uses the Founding Father to frame a comic argument about war, protest, political appearances, and the tension between saying one thing and doing another.

Lear was a major television producer and writer best known for influential sitcoms including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Good Times. His connection to the episode was more than a celebrity voice cameo: he also served as a creative consultant, and the historical flashback drew inspiration from his educational touring with a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

The episode aired April 9, 2003, during the Iraq War and became South Park’s 100th overall episode. The guest role is sometimes confused with the episode’s other celebrity associations, but Benjamin Franklin is specifically voiced by Lear, not Jay Leno, George Clooney, or Robert Smith.