Dan Glickman, The Real Oliver Wendell Douglas

By Paul Bedard

(US News)  Dan Glickman is living his dream. A Kansas boy who turned a law degree into a varied and exciting political and public service career, he has now come full circle: The chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America has been named a member of the National 4-H Council Board of Trustees. "I've got my foot in the farm and in films," he tells us. It's just his latest appointment: He also now serves on the board of trustees for the American Film Institute, giving him quite an eclectic group of organizations he advises. "They're both important," says Glickman, not trying to play favorites. "It is kind of ironic that I'm both trying to keep the film and farm movements going."

Far from the former stylish head of MPAA, the late Jack Valenti, Glickman likes to have a little cow dung on his tuxedo pants cuff. You might call him a real life Oliver Wendell Douglas, the Eddie Albert character in the old sitcom Green Acres. "I used to watch it. I know the song," he brags.

Glickman hails from Kansas, was a congressman who held a top spot on the Agriculture Committee, and was Bill Clinton's ag secretary before leaving to run Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He joined MPAA in 2004 and opened a wide war on movie pirating.

"I still like to keep my hands in the rural farm world. It also helps me to keep my bearings a bit," he says, explaining why he accepted the appointment. Asked which 4-H club interests him most--Fowl, Swine, Sheep, etc.--he noted that the 4-H focus now is on urban programs and he'd probably go in that direction. "I probably would have been on the city side," says the Wichita native.