Phil Donahue just died at age 88, basically the last hard lefto media figure I had respect for. Always seemed like a decent human being who didn't forget his relatively humble roots. He was actually fair when presenting different points of view, imagine that!
Uh, maybe I still have a little respect left for James Carville, but that's slipping fast. At least he's still alive! (notice I didn't say "barely")
Fredric Jameson, literary critic. Part of my grad work consisted of reading theory and although Jameson's The Prison House of Language and The Political Unconscious were key texts, I really enjoyed his writing on film, especially on Hitchcock.