A Pilgrim’s Digression

Simpsons Season 6

The box may have changed, but the DVD set of “The Simpsons” sixth season provides the best laughs yet of the series. So far, I have watched only disc one, and I can already say that this season contains two of the best episodes ever: “Itchy and Scratchy Land,” a biting satire on the Disney themeparks, and “Sideshow Bob Roberts,” in which the Republicans nominate a convicted felon to run for Mayor of Springfield.

What amazes me most, watching the latter episode roughly a decade after it first aired, is how relevant it is. The episode begins with Homer and Lisa in the family car, listening to Springfield’s Conservative talk radio host, Birch Barlow, an unmistakable parody of Rush Limbaugh. Barlow even crackles paper in front of the microphone and taps his desk, imitating Limbaugh’s trademark tics. The name “Birch” is probably a reference to the racist organization, the John Birch Society.

When Sideshow Bob Terwilliger phones the Barlow show from prison to complain about his wrongful incarceration, Barlow takes up his cause and calls upon his listeners to petition Mayor Quimby to have Bob released. Quimby, saying that he knows which way the wind is blowing and he can blow, too, releases Bob who soon becomes a rival candidate for mayor.

Meeting at GOP headquarters—a spooky, Transylvania-like castle on a hill—Mr. Burns and fellow Republicans, including Barlow and a sallow-skinned vampire, choose Bob to represent the Republican party in the upcoming election. Bob’s campaign tactics consist of literally wrapping himself in the American flag, smiling in a mechanical way that suggests painful intestinal gas, and slogans meant to demonize his oppononent as weak, corrupt, and unable to act. There is even a scene in which Bob accuses Quimby of flip-flopping.

Unable to compete with Bob’s antics, the equally corrupt Mayor Quimby runs the famous “Quimby For Mayor” campaign ad, the concluding line of which is “It’s not the mayor’s fault that the stadium collapsed.” And on election day, Bart and Lisa campaign for him at the polls (something that is in fact illegal, but then this is a cartoon, right?) by telling people “This time he really is the lesser of two evils.” What Lisa is in fact pointing at is the classic nineteen-nineties paradox that an unabashedly sleazy, philandering politician is better than a faux-upright, sleazy politician.

Perhaps the best line of all comes when Bob is exposed for voter fraud. In a rage, he tells a courtroom that though their guilt prompts them to vote Democratic, what they really want is a cold-hearted Republican to “brutalize criminals,” cut taxes, and rule them like a king.

It’s surprising that we have to go back a decade to find such a cutting satire of Republican politics. Living today in a decade in which Conservatism has triumphed, and the Birch Barlows can be found not only on AM radio, but on FoxNews as well as every other cable news channel on television, a political satire such as the “Sideshow Bob Roberts” episode would never be produced today. Indeed recent episodes of “The Simpsons” have never even touched the politics of the times in which we live today. It has been left to cruder programs, such as “Southpark,” to satirize the modern political condition, and frankly, judging from the film Team America: World Police “Southpark’s” creators are far more likely to skewer the GOP opposition than the GOP which rules us. We cannot look to Parker and Stone for comic relief from the sanctimony and crushing paranoia of the modern Republican party.

“The Simpsons” season six has been a pleasant surprise to me, so far, having forgotten about the character of Birch Barlow and Sideshow Bob’s brief stint as a Republican mayor. I wish that Barlow would make a reappearance on the show in the new season coming up, perhaps after spending some time in rehab. We need to remember what it is like to laugh at those who claim to be our moral and intellectual superiors.