They Have the Plant but We Have the Power

dental gang

Dentbol Gang killed Stalin.

more like mental gang amirite

Simpsons writers mostly referred to themselves as liberals though.

Capitalists do spend less resources on writing now.

reminder that the creator hates unions

Sure…

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I don't know that the Simpsons was ever really very liberal; they just took the piss out of everything. The whole reason the situation in the OP video came to pass was because the union enthusiastically traded their dental plan for a keg of beer and Carl tells homer that he can money as the union president if he's crooked - which Homer is entirely enthusiastic about. On top of that, Lisa's liberal tendencies are usually played for laughs.

I knew that photo would come back to haunt him

The early seasons of Simpsons were fairly liberal (for its time), it made fun of the American ideal that sitcoms held and did so leaning left without actually criticizing capitalism. You have that one episode with the exchange student from Albania yet that is as far as Simpsons ever went.

bump

Overton Window.

Democrats at least pretended to be for the workers in the 20th century, but their only real purpose was to diffuse the left. After the fall of the USSR, that purpose became redundant, and they stopped even pretending to not be a corporate party, leading to the rise of Clinton's "third way" politics. With the Republicans pushing hard for neoliberal bullshit and the Democrats all-but-outright uninterested in old socdem politics and enamored with this centrist bullshit, this allowed for the conservatives to make big gains in terms of shaping popular opinion on economic issues and the issues central to the labor movement fell out of the popular zeitgeist as the Overton Window moved rightward.

One could argue that this is partially a good thing, because it means that unions can't pretend to be cozy centrists anymore. Simply to be a union is to be "far left" by American political standards.

the simpsons are still liberals
youtube.com/watch?v=xK_Ahtg5CxE

Lisa was woke tbh

Holy shit, not only is it not funny but the animation is absolutely horrendous. Switching to digital was one of the final nails in that show's coffin.

I too miss the golden era of the simpsons
youtu.be/m2VxpTMAbas

Liberals are satanic.

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simpsons shouldve ended on 9/11

She's became a water down liberal later tho.

Is 9/11 acceptable cartoon fodder yet?

If the simpsons is worth anything anymore it's for the alt-right salt. That comment section is delicious, acting as if Groening wasn't a liberal the past 30 years. They're so butthurt not everyone agrees with their insane creamscicle.

Life in Hell>The Simpsons tbh

A case I don't necessarily believe, but feel makes a nice story:
1. Classic simpsons has a horrible view of human nature, broadly similar to how public choice theory advocates look at us. (See "Yes Minister")
2. However, this is offset by two factors: Factor one is that where Yes Minister assumes intelligent manipulation of the public sector, The Simpsons presumes utter incompetence and a great degree of laziness. Factor two is that The Simpsons sets out to mock other family shows, often by yielding happy endings or heartwarming moments that arise naturally which is to say in television terms unnaturally. On the sort of cheerful show the Simpsons mocks, love arises as a function of family. On The Simpsons love arises as a function of mutually hating The Flandersises for being oh-so-better than us, the normal people. In public choice terms, love does not exist and workers will pour over their contracts to ensure they work the minimum. In the Simpsons, workers can't read.
So in conclusion I'm not sure if that should be read as "We must move beyond this cynical view of humanity" or "The simpsons was basically right tbh, definitely moreso than economic models that assume we're smart.", but I typed the words anyway.

Also there's probably a historical element to it, given it first aired before Clinton came to power, with Reagan in recent memory and Carter in semi-recent memory. The sense of rapid decline from the 1970s had vanished, but now people were coming to the view that they were governed by evil bastards, despite the absence of this sense of decline. The economy is improving, Homer can find a new job every week, but the school is falling down*…
By the 1990s/2000s people have the delusion things are kind of sort of good (if a bit warlike) with Blair/late Clinton/Bush so you lose that appealing pessimism.

*that's basically a good summary of the state of Britain in 1996 anyway. After 1992, Britain's unemployment rate and inflation rate both fell rapidly (unemployment not back to

Matt Groening has always been a sarcastic lefty-liberal greenish type, but that's not true of everybody who has worked on the show (like John Swartzwelder, the guy who wrote the episode where alcohol gets banned in Springfield).

The optics of shows like Family Guy and Rick & Morty cause me physical pain. Why is this even animated? Make use of the medium, Jesus. The in-engine cutscenes of some video games from the late 90s look better.

>The Simpsons first aired on normal (BBC, not satellite) TV here in 1996 in that environment.
How weird. Germany got the Simpsons much earlier, 1991 on public broadcaster ZDF (later on private broadcaster Pro7). The usual delay between an episode airing in the US and Germany always has been about a year. Haven't bothered watching the widescreen Simpsons. Both original German voices of Marge and Homer are dead now.

Yeah. I miss his style.

Specifically, they fired their animators when they tried to unionize to get health insurance.

For real, a very popular cartoon apparently can't handle health insurance for the animators.

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This is hands down one the best episodes in the whole series.