The Simpsons as a metaphor for the Obama administration
I listen to a whole lot of The Simpsons. Not watch, listen. You see, we have a DVD player in the car, because the kids spend a ridiculous amount of time being ferried around in big circles (to visit far away family) or small circles (after school activities). Whether the passengers are my own kids, or other people’s, The Simpsons are always a hit.
I’ve now listened three times to Trash of the Titans, the 200th Simpsons episode, which aired back in 1998. Aside from the AlGorian environmental message tacked on in the last 2 minutes or so, it is a perfect metaphor for the Obama administration:
A local department store, Costington’s, announces the formation of a new August holiday intended (as Lisa points out) to boost sales: Love Day. [Makes me think of the media created Obama hype.] The Simpsons celebrate it, but the vast amount of packaging it produces causes the garbage to build up. [Remember the mess left after Obama’s inauguration?] When Homer eventually takes it out he is infuriated with the garbage men as they drive away without collecting the Simpson family’s trash. He insults the men, and in response, the family’s garbage service is cut off, leading to the Simpsons’ garbage piling up on their front lawn. Homer and Bart think it is easy to throw trash out the window and as the mess continues to grow, Marge tells Homer to apologize for the remark, but he insists on doing things his way.
Homer awakes one morning to find that the pile of trash at the front of the house has been removed. He proudly boasts that he beat city hall only to learn that Marge had written a letter of apology to the Springfield Sanitation Commissioner, forging Homer’s name. In response, Homer goes to see the Sanitation Commissioner, Ray Patterson, demanding the apology to be returned. Patterson tries to be civil with Homer, but Homer insists he will get in a fight with the sanitation department. Eventually Homer decides that he will run for Sanitation Commissioner, remaking it into his image. [Obama vowed to be transformational.]
Homer begins to promote his campaign. It starts off badly with Homer being beaten up after interrupting U2’s Popmart concert [the “Big Stars” touch], but picks up when Homer, after prompting from Moe, thinks of a slogan for his campaign: “Can’t someone else do it?” [The ultimate Progressive campaign, since all bucks are passed on to the government.] Homer spreads his message to the town and promises expensive goodies such as round-the-clock garbage service and having the sanitation workers do all the cleaning, which works, leading to his landslide victory in the election. [Just as Obama promised government health care, government cars, government climate purity, etc.] After being sworn in to the office, he shows what he plans to do by singing a parody of “The Candy Man” entitled “The Garbage Man”.
However, fulfilling his promises proves quite costly and after Homer’s mass spending spree [stimulus, anyone?], Mayor Quimby denounces him for spending the Sanitation Department’s yearly budget of $4.6 million in only a month. [Deficit anyone?] To solve the money problem, Homer gets cities all over the United States to pay him to mash their excess rubbish into the abandoned mine shaft on the outskirts of Springfield. [The inevitable sell-off of American assets.] The rest of the family warn Homer that this is endangering the town, but he claims there is nothing to worry about. Eventually the garbage builds up underground and begins to erupt, pouring trash all over the town. [Do I need to spell this one out?] At a town hall meeting, Homer is fired from his post and replaced with Ray Patterson, but Patterson declines reinstatement to the position, expressing his amusement at them “wallowing in the mess [they] made.” Quimby then takes extreme measures by moving the entire town five miles down the road from its current site, but Lisa points out that even though they are transplanting Springfield, they will just start littering again when they finish moving. [We can run, but we can’t hide from the disaster that is Progressive politics.]
