Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington With Matt Christman

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

In the show's first truly political episode, we welcome back our pal Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House! We first reflect on the legacy of Reader's Digest and Lisa's skills as a patriotic essayist, then chat about how different things are in the 31 years since this first aired, while also thinking about the connections of Harvard to both Simpsons and many US politicians. Listen now with one informed electorate, baste well with veto power! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama talking of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more I hardly endorse this event or product product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's basted with veto power. I'm your host, the Bermuda distruster, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today in the same room. Hey, it's Andrew Gilbert, and I appeared on the highly unpopular 75 Cent piece. And who do we have on the line, our special guest today? That's me, Matt Crispin. Hey.

And this week's episode is Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington. I'm sorry, Dad. I couldn't think of a nice way to say America stinks. This week's episode aired on september 26th 1991 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby leonardo dicaprio joins the cast of growing pains smells like teen spirits music video debuts on mtv just as the album nevermind is hitting store shelves and the clarence thomas hearings are about to reach their end in washington dc so a big the 90s are beginning yes at this point here and same with the simpsons starting season three i think leonardo dicaprio

at this point he ushered in the haircut all boys had in the 90s. This is where it started. The mushroom, the classic mushroom bowl cut. As he goes, so go us all. That's, yeah. Well, it smells like teen spirit. I think, you know, Nirvana's growing success, well, like, I guess really peaks at Christmas time with the, you know, who knows how true story, but the common knowledge was everybody bought Michael Jackson album for their kids, and then their kids returned that album and got Nirvana as a way of saying, no, it's the 90s now, mom and dad. But the Simpsons never got Kurt Cobain on the show.

Yeah, they missed out. I bet he'd have been in Homer Palooza were he alive then. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And yes, the Clarence thomas hearings officiated by joseph robinette biden i believe right or he was oh yeah yeah classic snl sketch that is really all i really remember from the clarence thomas hearings where they're all just talking about their pornography preferences was was someone playing biden in the sketch because

i want to believe it was kevinalon. It was Kevin Nealon. Okay, excellent. You know, Clarence Thomas confirmed, well, like 13-2 or something after this, but it did spark a conversation about sexual harassment in America that had not really been in the forefront at that time, at least. But yeah, every, every, and then Clarence Thomas still, still doing a great work. Still keeping it real. Yeah, so yes, the very early 90s day this episode came out.

And as Disney Plus says, this is the first episode of season three. Yes, nothing happened before this. Yep, no episode aired. Certainly not one with Michael Jackson in it. Your memories are false. Here's Boba Fett. Look at him. He's dancing around in his new show.

But joining us today is, of course, Matt Chrisman of Chapo Trap House. Matt was last with us on, I believe, Bark Gets Hit by a Car. Welcome to the show again, Matt. Yeah, thanks for having me. And sadly, we couldn't have you in person for our postponed SF Sketch Fest show, but this episode is such a great political one that is so and that is so in the i'd say choppo wheelhouse that i think it's perfect to have on especially one of our best episodes ever i think is uh called the deficit rag well i mean more than anything your show has taught me matt that all op-ed

writers are uh dog brain psychos and this this like after listening to six years of your show or whatever and then watching this again it really uh hammered home just how bad all the writing is and the tropes they're making fun of even though the essays are written by children they're making fun of things they're seeing written by adults for sure yeah yeah these are all op-ed staples being used here and most of the op-ed writers i think probably haven't improved their writing style since their childhoods anyway. I mean, what would be the incentive to? Once you're on the conveyor belt, the career conveyor belt, there is no incentive to improving anything.

In fact, improving your writing style or the acuity of your analysis would only disrupt the apple cart you're on the road to uh hopefully you know running the cia or some sort of position like that on the on the harvard cart so why why change it yeah yeah well yeah matt i mean you're i we we talk about how much we we enjoy your podcast too but especially like this one is so also just about like history and the presidency too. And you just did last year an amazing couple of miniseries. I love the Hinge Points one and also the Hell of Presidents with Chris Wade. That was such a great series. Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

And yeah, I was just spending a year just thinking about presidents. And so do you, I mean watching this episode i i think you can really see though the backgrounds of the main major simpsons producers on the show especially al gina mike reese and george meyer the writer of this episode all came like literally from the same harvard class and the same guys who wrote in the lampoon a lot of them are lisa types who you know through intelligence and and striving and and you know bootstrap ism that they made it to harvard and then they end up comedy writers instead of you know senate pages or whatever yeah and i think that that happens when certain people get to harvard and realize what it is like oh yeah yeah, this is just a daycare for elite kids

to have them hang around for a while and collect business cards before going off to rule the world. And how can you not get irony poisoned and want to just write about how they all suck in the Harvard Lampoon? Yeah, like what can I do that is, of course, still culturally valued and leaves me as successful? That's not that's not optional. But that does not implicate me in this disgusting, grubby business.

And then, hey, doing satire. I'm going to write for Elf. Yeah, that's what Al Jean and Mike Reese said. I actually so very little of this episode is based on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A few key plot points. I did re-watch it and i remember being kind of bored by it the first time i think it's still kind of a boring

movie it might be because i just watch it's a wonderful life over the holidays and like george bailey is the chad to the virgin jeff smith in my opinion like jeff is such a he's a big american nerd he's way into this boys camp he wants to build he's's kind of a weirdo. Honestly, sus. Yeah. Why do you care so much about these boys going to camp? Exactly. What's going on here? People forget that the reason he is filibustering is because he is dead set on building this private camp for boys. Yeah.

Yes. I want to be surrounded by boys. No civilization anywhere near. The police station very far away from here. Yeah. But I mean, there are some key plot points where, I mean, it's very subtle in this episode, but Lisa, she's inspired by the forest, and Jeff Smith in the movie is inspired by the wilderness. And in both cases, the political machine wants to destroy that dream for both of these characters.

And, I mean, Matt, do you recall watching this episode live as a child back in the day? I don't have a specific memory of this one, no. I watched them all as they were appearing, but this is one where I think my strongest memories are on the syndication rewatch. I think this episode really works great. I think it's a great episode like it starts pure season three like as in there's two holdovers well blood feud isn't anyway look this is the real first episode they made for the third season that wasn't a holdover from season

two that starred michael jackson this is a real one and i think i think this is like shows how good they got like the big step up from two to three. They're more cynical. They're sharper. Homer's stupider. The animation's even better. Everything's just firing on all cylinders in this episode. Yeah, like you said, Henry, this is the first production episode of season three.

I believe Sam Simon is off the show because he's no longer the showrunner, Aljean and Mike Rees are. And then Aljean came back after season four to run the show from he's no longer the showrunner aljean and mike reese are and then aljean came back after season four to run the show from season 13 to present so between this episode and cape fear that's what he and mike reese ran before leaving for the critic and where did sam simon go well he went to abc to make a sitcom through gracie films called sibs that he and james l brooks executive produced and that was a huge failure it actually debuted on the same night as Home Improvement. And both Dan Castellaneta and Alex Rocco were on the show.

And it got a huge order up front, because I think ABC was like, we're going to get a show from the Simpsons people. This is going to rule. That show aired like seven of 22 episodes that were produced. And then Sam Simon would go on to do things like other sitcoms that failed, like Phenom and the george carlin show but i think getting him out of the room made things a lot easier for the writers because there was not the the strife of him versus macaraning which seemed

to be a huge uh problem in the first two seasons i watched the george carlin show oh me too which also had alex rocco on it oh wow. Sam Simon really liked that Alex Rocco guy. I wonder if he played... Come on, Mo Green, what's not to like? He was a member, I'm sure you guys know this, he was a member of the Winter Hill Gang. He was one of Whitey Bulger's henchmen. Well, I did not know that. I did not know that either.

He was an Austin mob guy before he was an actor. I watched Phenom. Phenom anyone? No. I did not see Ph it's about it's the first time hearing of phenom it's a girl that plays tennis uh you know oh the girl tennis show right that's come up in our research before but yeah i well all three of those shows are just like they don't exist like they didn't get a dvd release or maybe i bet the george carlin show did get a dvd i bet it did but his name attached to it but there's there's no physical release for sibs there's no itunes page for sibs but gene and reese them getting

to show run like they really have that same stick-to-itiveness that they got them into harvard like gene al gene is a i don't want to call him a ben shapiro type but he did get into harvard at 16 like that in that way he's like that much of a backpack uh and but i mean he again he was like oh i want to write comedy and be but he's a mega nerd who loves spider-man so i can't be too mad at aljean but uh yeah and i mean they're both very talented i think they got this role because they had the most sitcom experience they had done alf and it's gary shandling show uh jeff martin i think had the most comedy writing on television experience because he spent about eight years on Letterman before The Simpsons. But they had, you know, they had been on sitcoms before this and had a lot of experience there.

And they mentioned that they rewrote the hell out of this one, like probably the most rewrites they'd done on a show to that point. And then a peak just they're like, oh, we got to get it better and better and better. Some slight changes. I'll bring them up but the great simpsons history account on twitter that guy 3002 had like one of the early drafts from the his comparisons of like page for page the most of them are improvements that are in this episode so i think it probably helped them a lot and then on top of that you got george meyer who you know did not write a ton of episodes like as in his name is on it but he's one of the

most influential writers in the show and politically reading him i still i view him i think as a left libertarian type of guy like he he you know is an environmentalist dude who wrote jokes i remember still that great line john vd said about george meyer they said if george meyer wrote an episode that could make one kid distrust the cops he'd be happy like but also but also they talk about how the in the episodes where they complain about taxes and being taxed and and viewing taxes thefts they're like that's a real george meyer line there they say so he's uh he's a tough guy to read politically i think but certainly his cynicism towards government yeah through in this episode i deserve it cynicism i'd say it's too bad he's not on this commentary track because i want to hear like i feel like all the political stuff comes from him especially the

reader's digest uh parody because he wrote a reader's digest parody in college i couldn't find it online but yeah that all came from him and i want to believe like all the political content came from him too it does feel like something that he would do. And he said that he was complimented. George Meyer was apparently complimented on this episode by Clinton's secretary of the interior, Bruce Babbitt, who thought it was a very funny episode. They had mentioned, though, I don't know much about Bruce Babbitt. Matt, do you know anything about that? That guy, former Arizona governor, the the interior secretary that's that's what

wikipedia told me yeah yeah yeah yeah i that's all i remember he's not on the clinton body count list uh he couldn't be that close of a friend lower key members of the clinton cabal he didn't get invited to those parties charge of the trees of course uh and and also like you've got wes Archer directing it, who had briefly between seasons two and three quit the show. And this was his return to it. And he's a cool Texas guy. I think that comes through in this. And they worked really hard on all the realistic locations for Washington, D.C.

Yeah, it's the first vacation episode. I mean, Bart went to France i mean bart went to france and there was uh they went to capital city for an act but this is really went to detroit for uh for his brother but that but that detroit was not detroit it didn't look anything like detroit this time they're like no these let's just draw all the real stuff and when my family visited uh washington dc in the summer of 2001 which was pretty for a family trip what a great time to visit washington dc but like when i saw the landmarks i was like oh that's the thing that's the spirit of st louis that bart was in there's this is that i i saw it all through the lens

of this episode i hope you didn't try to find the winifred reacher howe uh memorial no no i didn't we we did drive by the jefferson memorial i was like i wish we could actually visit it but i'm actually doing what every person in this episode does which is not visited and yeah also i i think this episode spoke to me as a kid and that was an adult because like i was an essay writing dork in school like i loved writing essays i loved i loved getting a gold star from teacher who said like i had the best essay about uh crime and punishment you're a smart little boy and they tapped me on the head like yeah so i agree with lisa i could see so much of myself and lisa's love of doing it and then also

it's souring on her as she sees like everything the the reality of the world yeah i was an essay weirdo too i was a 10 year old buying dave berry books so i wonder if anyone uh was worried about me start this episode with it say uh there's a funny chalkboard gag about spitballs being freedom of speech which then leads into a homer opening the mail gag which feels like a sequel to the opening mail section that's in like blood feud you remember homer's like bill bill thing hey there's there's a few runners that start up in this episode and homer this is like a new season three you gotta recalibrate how stupid homer is like homer's dumber here than he was last season starting with like you start you think that he's actually good at not falling for all these scams but when when he finally sees that million dollars, he's like, oh yeah, I got it.

All right. And he just runs off with it. And Bob, you shared with me this great article about how the history of the publishers clearing out sweepstakes and how lots of people have fallen for scams just like what Homer has done in this episode. They went through several lawsuits throughout the 90s because they basically just called everyone a finalist. And with a lot of misleading language. So they had to really recalibrate what they put on the envelope. I remember the cruel false joy that you felt getting one of those in the mail for just a second. Yeah, I have vague memories as a kid thinking like this is a check yeah we could buy things with this and my mom said no it's it's a scam to buy magazines and you can play with the stamps in there i saw that

article there was like a story of one old man who like twice tried to cash one of those checks and and ended up in a lot of trouble because of it that's basically the plot of the film nebraska if anyone's seen that nice check that out the alexander payne movie bruce dern plays a retiree who tries to cash a fake uh sweepstakes check i've been meaning to watch becomes a journey of journey of father son uh rediscovery in black and white i think that's why i didn't want to i i father son things get me too much but you don't want to see will forte not like uh dropping his pants if i can't see his ass like in that new mcgruber i saw his ass like for 40 of that

series run and i was happy for it but no i gotta check that i isn't bob odenkirk in it too i think is uh yeah also that that prize patrol thing that homer just runs to the bank i just love how much he gives up like when the guy's like no this is not a chat void void shut up like just looking at your shoes and going shut up like it's so so good it just feels like writers looking around the world and thinking of jokes for homer like you drive by an all-you-can-eat restaurant what if homer went to one you get that in the mail what if homer thinks this is real and this is connected in a in an unintentional way to what happens next in which uh apparently publishers clearinghouse got this idea because readers digest had very

popular sweepstakes so they got the idea from them in like the late 60s okay yeah that's i i love lisa shutting him down with like, I don't think real checks have exclamation points. But yeah, so then comes in Reading Digest, which is a parody of Reader's Digest, which right after we record this, it turns 100 years old. Like its first was printed in the early February 1922.

And it's somehow it still in in publishing today yeah it's as a kid i didn't really i knew readers digest is like well it seemed boring to me it didn't have cartoons which is what draws homer in in this too i i never gave much time to readers digest looking up its politics i can see exactly why george meyer chose it to make fun of it in this in this very episode like it was you know a conservative magazine it was fiercely pro-american like reagan loved it pro-vietnam but everything is shrouded in just folksiness yes yeah and then very like uh like soviet red baiting anti-soviet red baiting stuff too. And that also a very pro-American intervention and suspected of being tied to the CIA.

The one source I saw noted that like at the very least, the versions printed in Latin America were certainly connected to the CIA. If not that, I don't know. I mean, yeah, there were definitely CIA contract agents among its editors and writers. And yeah, it pushed a very heavy Cold War agenda all through that era. In 1969, at the height of protests against the Vietnam War, they put out an issue of Reader's Digest with a detachable American flag and encouraged everyone to take it out and to display it somewhere to show their their love for the country. I saw that the week this or around when this episode aired, I tried to find like a Reader's Digest for that week. The best one I

could find was like two months after this one. And it had it had a story that basically was the it was like i was almost eaten by sharks so basically the story homer tells and then another one is like it was a polemic for political decency written by fred barnes the like executive editor of the weekly standard who i was when i looked about i was like oh right that guy it was like this oh a bush era fox news head whatever happened to that guy like he's that's right yes but now readers i just comes out i think 10 times a year which is what the mad magazine schedule was before it died so it can't be long for this world yeah i i i would guess it's just propped up by the cia at this point some old some old uh suit keeping it going.

There are lots of ads for Jack Ryan in it. So of course, put the pieces together. And they probably just forgot like the account is on auto pay. They just keep getting paid, even though nobody cares anymore. And I guess, you know, in pop culture, Reader's Digest is also famous for like the Reader's Digest version that saying meaning if you cut down shorten it usually for the worse and remove like I can give me the Reader's Digest version like which removes like context or or and and dumbs it down for people that's that's

generally what it means and and so of course Homer would love this magazine if he read it and he instantly like just just falls in love with it once he's given it it's just a free copy the simpsons will be right back bark go to bed sure thing dad it's bark versus the space mutants for your nes only bark simpson can save the earth Go to bed. Sure thing, Dad. It's Bart versus the Space Mutants for your NES. I don't remember. Only Bart Simpson can save the Earth. Bart! Okay.

Get the Simpsons game for your NES from Acclaim. Bart! Welcome to The Break, everybody. It's Henry Gilbert, and I don't know if checks have a bunch of exclamation points but i certainly do and i say thank you to our guest this week matt chrisman from chapo trap house it's always a treat to have him on and uh you know if you are in louisiana i believe you can still you still catch their live show if it's not already sold out i don't know but of course you know where to find chapo trap house hell of presidents hinge points all the cool stuff that

matt chrisman does thank you so much again matt for doing our podcast as always and if you're a new listener to talking simpsons i would like you to know that this is only possible thanks to listeners who support us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons this is a fully listener supported podcast which is why i ask you guys to check out all of the cool stuff we have at patreon.com. Me and Bob doing this full-time. Five bucks a month gets you access to so many exclusive podcasts, new every month. You get each month a new episode of Talking Futurama, where we just covered I Dated a Robot, the Lucy Liu episode, as well as a new episode of Talking of the Hill,

where this month we're covering Three Days of the Condo. And there's so much else going on in the Patreon. You get a giant pack catalog for that $5. All of the previous exclusive miniseries that we've done on there, us covering the entirety of The Critic, Mission Hill, all the previous episodes about Futurama and King of the Hill, and also our top 10 favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series. You gotta check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

But if you want to feel like a real, very important person, you should sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because that premium level has all the five dollar things i just listed for you but also our exclusive monthly what a cartoon movie podcast each month me and bob not only do the regular what a cartoon podcast where we cover an animated series super in-depth just like we do the simpsons but we also do the what a cartoon movie podcast of us covering an animated film super duper in-depth even over five hours long last month we covered south park bigger longer and uncut that was a whole bunch of fun this month we're covering the disney golden age classic pinocchio which was also really really

great and if you sign up at the $10 level you'll also get next month our super deep dive into the classic 1988 film who framed roger rabbit you are not going to want to miss that please check out the entire three years plus back catalog of over 220 hours of exclusive what a cartoon movie podcast in addition to all the other stuff at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part.

Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Care. Did I mention that we care? The Homer's initial reaction to Reader's Digest is brought in by a cartoon in our first clip. Mr. Simpson, I can assure you this check of yours is non-negotiable. Oh, yeah? Well, what makes you so damn sure? You see where it says void, void, Well, what makes you so damn sure? You see where it says, void, void, void, and this is not a check? Cash value, one twentieth of a cent.

Mr. Banker, do not honor... Shut up. I had a feeling it was too good to be true. Every time you get a million dollars, something queers the deal. I don't think real checks have exclamation points. Well, at least we got a free sample of Reading Digest. Marge, I never read a magazine in my life, and I'm not going to start now.

Hey, a cartoon. Well, dear, you always wanted a compact. Ain't it the truth? No, it's not the truth, Homer. It's well documented that women are safer drivers than men. Oh, Marge, cartoons don't have any deep meaning. They're just stupid drawings that give you a cheap laugh. His butt crack made me laugh.

And as a kid, that cheap laugh worked. But yeah. And apparently the Lockhorns, which is a parody of the motoring mishaps, it's still being published. Still? Yeah. The joke was out of date 30 years ago.

Oh, my God. God god those lockhorns just imagine them locked in perpetual battle you're never to be freed from it educate themselves yep yeah impressing to think about i mean that's just a great early statement on readers digest you know positions as well that they're publishing basically a cartoon from the 50s about like those women drivers and that marge can just stand up and be like no statistically this is wrong and also just a great episode for a start of an episode that's full of deeper political meaning to have it start with homer saying like cartoons don't mean anything they're just cheap laughs that's that's a great gag perfect headline parody for readers digestader's Digest of like, can we trust Bermuda? It's such a great.

Just like pointless xenophobia. Yeah. About a thing that is like, so they have to go to such an extreme of like, well, you'd never write a xenophobic thing about Bermuda. No one would even bother to be scared of that. Like that's such a great extreme there to go to. We had just invaded Panama like a year before that so oh okay so anybody could be anybody and then granada like five years before that so so they're really just running it up the

flagpole countries yeah any one of them could at any point just be just become out of nowhere a huge threat to us i was just listening to uh your your great hinge points episode on 9-11 and you mentioned how you know at this time america doesn't have the soviets anymore we got this war machine we're looking for something like you know this is a why not bermuda over any other uh of our uh needed new enemies yeah and when he invites homer to grab some donuts he turns them down uh i can find no google proof that tolstoy had said this line about give me learning but i'll admit i've never actually read a tolstoy uh novel so i wouldn't know but uh i was more of a i read dostoevsky in school give me give me credit for that at least i read crime and punishment i did but yeah i i don't know

anytime i searched for this quote in tolstoy google was just like oh you mean this episode of the simpsons right that that makes me think tolstoy didn't say i think that was written by dr soybean and it also burns looking at him reading saying they're like you're this job description clearly specifies an illiterate a new new level of stupid for Homer right there. And he says Homer watches them watching TV, watches the kids watching TV. We get another Troy McClure.

A rare time where they're watching a bad Troy McClure movie that is not introduced by Troy McClure is giving an example. I wonder if after this they're like, it's funnier just to hear him say the names of movies instead of have them watch Quaker with a shovel. And by the way, Dolores Montenegro, not a real person. I thought she was until I looked it up for this podcast. I was like, oh, it's a fun, believable bad actor name.

It's so great. I wish she could have appeared in every Troy thing. Like she was always his constant co-star. I wish they'd have kept that going. She was in Calling All Quakers later this this season so let's look forward to that and yes that homer instantly is calling the the tv the idiot box like he's been that he has never read a book in his life and now he's turned to calling it the idiot box and i always just love the animation of just like tearing apart his his shirt pocket as he will not admit that he's

wrong that it can't fit in his pocket i just love that so much the uh homer then reads them a true life story of survival which again the cover story on that 1991 copy of reader's digest i found was in the jaws of a shark was the name of it so this this apparently was one of their stock style of stories readers digest love to do which i i love that homer so so childish that even them telling him like obviously he lives homer he wrote the story marge is at least slightly annoyed at this uh newfound love in the beginning yes yeah who is that bookworm smithers homer simpson sir sim eh? How very strange. His job description clearly specifies an illiterate. We now return to Troy McClure and Dolores Montenegro

in Breacher with a Shovel. But irrigation can save your people, Chief Smiling Bear. Marge, look at them staring at that idiot box. God forbid they would ever read something and improve their minds. You've certainly taken a shine to that magazine. It's not just one magazine, Marge. They take hundreds of magazines, You've certainly taken a shine to that magazine. It's not just one magazine, Marge. They take hundreds of magazines.

Filter out the crap and leave you with something that fits right in your front pocket. Those kids don't know what they're missing. Dad! Hey, what gives, man? We're all going to sit down as a family and listen to an inspiring story of wilderness survival. Then I heard the sound that all Arctic explorers dread. The pitiless bark of the sea lion. He'll be killed!

Homer, he obviously got out alive if he wrote the article. Don't be so... Oh, you're right. Well, it's messing up things in the bedroom for her too you know homer needs to put down that call me dr soybean thing and get get to his work you know uh and this is the first appearance of homer's half glasses as well in the in the bedroom scene here when marge comes on to him and he says like uh oh, you know, if you want me to put on a costume, like Homer read it. I definitely think the Reader's Digest story he read was suggesting the wife should put on a costume, not the man should.

And then Homer completely misread it, suggesting that he would put on a costume for Marge, which Marge just takes it away. I think that she'd like that. I think we have enough textual evidence that she gets off on that kind of thing. Yeah. The Mr. Plow jacket. That Yeah, the Mr. Plow jacket. That's true. Mr. Plow jacket, yeah.

Yeah, the Mr. Plow would show us that she does respond well to costumes. So you're right, yeah. Homer was onto something there. Thank you, Reader's Digest. It really did save so much. I don't think anything this spicy would be in Reader's Digest, though. I do enjoy the joke. Well, it definitely seemed to be in the

context of marital sex though yeah it's not about you know this unlawful sex under God it was at least a spice of marital sex and uh yeah yeah I just love Marge's like reaction shadow like thank you homie and just like okay we go to the dinner table They're making meatloaf men, which writer Laurel Elizabeth in 2015 for Pace Magazine made them herself. And it seems like they turned out okay. But the point of a meatloaf is it's one big loaf and it's juicy in the middle. If you're going to have little meatloaf men, they're all too crispy. That goes against what I want meatloaf to be.

I want a big, wet meatloaf. I feel like you're wasting a lot of the loaf unless you're just using like sort of like a muffin tin for them or something i don't know what's going on there when she used like in the the pace magazine article she used just a regular like gingerbread size cutter which i think marge made him slightly bigger than that but yeah i though i guess yeah they were like the size of it was like the size of a doll yeah it was in bart's hand so maybe that would work if it's bigger though a cookie sized meatloaf guy is not gonna be there's not gonna be enough interior but i mean meatloaf sucks anyway yeah it does well if you're like you you no no meal admits you've given up more than i'm just going to take a wad of meat put in the oven yeah like

how can i stretch out the cheapest meat I can buy? How can I adulterate this? I mean, there's a fact that there's a reason that it's one of the foods where ketchup, which, hey, I love ketchup. But I understand that it is a low-tier condiment meant for the least sophisticated foods. It's one of the few foods where ketchup is like the preferred addition. Oh, yeah. I've even seen it where where it's just a big wad of beef i've even seen it where ketchup is like the frosting you glaze it with oh yeah yeah i well so i uh homer loves the dry down end piece of meatloaf so he probably likes all these like super dry meatloaf men as well and yeah i also

just love the little bart hot potatoing it between his hands as he takes a bite like that's a really fun animation too like wes archer and his team they're doing great like wes archer like he also drew that's just his handiwork the uh the cartoon that homer saw too i meant to mention that earlier but uh and also like there's just man the little animation bit when homer says and it's free free free yeah the cut to him uh below the table almost they would never do that to do one cut like to completely change a camera setup for one word for emphasis uh they'd never do that now like it then things are so stayed and locked down in the show i don't think they'd that would just seem weird they'd be like oh why'd you do that like

we have this one camera setup why'd you change it like it's funny because it highlights how emotionally unstable homer is because he goes from being excited so excited over reading digest to throwing it in the trash yes over the over the concept of one contest i feel like if they were in the living room this book would be in the fire but we don't get books being thrown in the fire until later this season they haven't got to the fire yet this is the precursor to the fire. Yes. Yes. Homer gives up on Reading Digest in this next clip as he learns about a contest he cannot enter. This baby never steers you wrong.

And it was free. Free. It certainly has enriched our lives. Wow. Win a trip to Washington, D.C. All expenses paid. VIP tour. Oh, it's for kids.

Wait, Dad. Hmm, an essay contest. Children under 12, 300 words, fiercely pro-American. Sounds interesting. Bart, maybe this is something you'd like to do, too. Mom, it's a nice thought, but we both know that this is the pony to bet on. What would Ben Franklin say if he were alive today? He'd say... Oh, think of a better opening.

How's it going, honey? Not very well. Well, when I used to get stuck like this, I'd go for a bike ride. Do kids go on bike rides anymore? Yes. I don't know. I thought maybe bikes weren't cool anymore the kids still use that word cool yes mom that's uh i feel that way like marge now i've grown into marge just like the kids still do that the kids still play minecraft what do kids do now i i don't understand

yeah the i mean patriots of tomorrow, like, you can also just see what the reason for Reader's Digest doing this would be. Like, yeah, we got to get them young. Let's turn these kids into fiercely pro-American rhetoric right now. Like, it's the perfect Reader's Digest. And, oh, man, the advertisement of it of the kid, like, in front of,

pledging allegiance in front of the flag like it's perfect and lisa like she would of course be drawn to this part just like bounces off it instantly he's like no come on let's not waste our time yeah it's not necessary it's not like drop down funny but i like how the cute interaction between marge and lisa because uh lisa is just quietly tickled by how out of touch Marge is she's not annoyed she's like oh mom come on and and nervous and insecure Marge is too she's like yes mom come on like yeah and yeah I think that the Ben Franklin opening is the start of like parodies of bad opinion columnists like it's just so great like how I feel like you guys must have read something that's like if ben franklin were alive today he would say or do this or ronald reagan or yeah yes

yeah i mean invoking a dead man to say they'd agree with you that's like that's opinion column number uh strategy number one i'd say they head over to the national forest which the level of detail too again you wouldn't see this in the design of of a simpsons forest like that i i guess too we're still in the purple trees era of simpsons design though they're slowly kind of pushing it away like that's fine i like the wild colors i like uh faith crowley's pink hair we're still in like pink and blue and purple hair uh i do i do like those touches and lisa gets her central metaphor by being in this beautiful. And I mean, the animators like did make it gorgeous. Like there's literally like Purple Mountain's majesty behind the eagle as it spreads its wings.

Yeah. And and Lisa, you know, is given for an eight year old to use the central metaphor of a growing forest for America's greatness blossoming over time. Like, it's smart for an eight-year-old, I'd say. She's pretty creative. I can see why it won. Especially, again, like fiercely pro-American. And so, yes, as Lisa has her essay ready, they head to their parody of the VFW, which is, that's the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

This is Veterans of Popular Wars uh which i believe is a gag about how uh the vfw is uh pretty unwelcoming to the american veterans of the vietnam invasion yeah they would have true yeah they would have uh veterans of unpopular wars i think with simpson tide maybe oh yeah yeah yeah but uh but yeah i mean uh matt like the king king of the hill did an episode about that too of the the vietnam were, you know, touchy feely hippie types trying to go to the VFW alongside the World War Two and Korean veterans like Cotton Hill as well. And it was just a culture clash. Beyond that, they just were losers. They lost.

What's the respect there? You went over there and got your asses kicked. That's how a lot of them saw it. I think because the shows are somewhat related, there was a darker Beavis and Butthead about that where there was a VFW cookout and they kind of sparked a battle between the two groups of veterans

by causing them to have flashbacks. Oh, that's good. I forgot that one. This is their, you know, just entitled kind of gag about this. yeah i you know my grandpa he loved to go the vfw was his hangout place and he and he didn't even go overseas like he was in the coast guard in world war ii like but obviously he's more welcome there than a guy who went to vietnam you want to stay off the sidewalks anywhere near vfw because those elderly people are just driving home drunk and they let them yeah yeah right this way veteran guy who went to vietnam you want to stay off the sidewalks anywhere near vfw because those elderly

people are just driving home drunk and they let them yeah yeah right this way veteran they respect him well i think all the ww2 veterans are now uh they're not driving anymore no no i think i mean even the korean war ones probably not too yeah i mean my my grandpa has been dead like 20 years now yeah he hasn't been drinking in the vfw in a long time i do remember going to the vfw for uh friday fish fries when i was a kid that's a very catholic thing yeah that's uh man i go to the vfw they had the potato pancake and the applesauce oh that sounds good piece of perch i'm sure it looked great under the vfw like lighting of a cafeteria it all sounds very easy to gum down without any teeth that's very important i i often identify vfw halls with

going them uh going to see small scale independent pro wrestling if you have w halls like they you know obviously a vfw probably isn't going to rent out their hall to like a punk band or something but pro wrestling is enough of like a it's this weird middle ground where like super lefty nerds can be into it but also conservative grandpas and so it's this it's this meeting ground for for all types of people but yes as they arrive there homer lets lisa know he there's nothing he wouldn't do for this magazine. He doesn't give a shit about Lisa. But yes, in our first essay reading here, I wanted to play it. Nelson, not usually this good as a populist leader here, but he's really good in this little speech. Thanks for driving me to the contest, Dad.

Sweetheart, there's nothing I wouldn't do for that magazine. So burn the flag if you must. But before you do, you better burn a few other things. You better burn your shirt and your pants. Be sure to burn your TV and car. Oh, yes, and don't forget to burn your house, because none of those things could exist without six white stripes, seven red stripes, and a hell of a lot of stars

thank you very much yeah damn right uh homer i feel like nelson got second place in this i think yeah homer like homer just screamed like damn right like and that shows you homer's politics there too i think that yeah nelson nelson normally later he'd be like hey i got nuked something but here he definitely has a political vision nelson does and he was hitting a very hot an amazing to think of but a very hot button topic in the early 90s flag burning was uh a real live political issue there was uh talk about the constitutional amendment there was uh court cases about local uh ordinances banning the flag burning. It was a topic of national conversation, whether or not it should be

legal to burn the flag. That's how few problems were left in 1991. I remember me and my bros burned some flags in the 90s because we're like, yeah, we're cool. We can do this, man. Yeah. No, I talked to I remember meeting a person who was slightly younger than me in like 2010 who said oh and it's it's crazy it's illegal to burn a flag I was like what no it's not what the what the fuck are you talking about like but I I think it the perception is you should like it's illegal just for how some people really frown on it that's that's been one of my favorite things in the in the online trenches these days when you would see a person say like you couldn't make everybody so offended these days blah blah blah and it's like

just share a picture of a flag burning to one of the people who says you couldn't make blazing saddles today and see how they react like that that's the test i think but i i still think there's people who get really offended by flag burning. I guess. It's hard to tell anymore. You know, things are so hyperspeed. And more importantly, they're so contextual. Like, you get mad about a thing that you just saw. And there's a little, like, week-long psychodramatic arc that you participate in. And then there's a new one.

So I don't even know if there's anything that has, like, long-term indelible power anymore. If it's not part of the thing you're mad at i don't even know if you recognize it like it's not even in the visible light spectrum anymore i i yeah we'll have to see somebody should burn a flag and see what happens go to the villages and burn a flag at the i i mean yeah do it in front of the one of those boat parades of trumpers in their boats like it burn the flag there and let's i. And I'd be interested to see the reaction there. Then we have just a montage of parodies of every essay writing cliche in the book.

Like, I just, I love this also. I'll just play the clip. Recipe for a free country. Mix one cup of Liberty with three teaspoons of justice. Add one informed electorate. Based well with veto power. My back is spineless. My belly is yellow.

I am the American non-voter. Stir in two cups of Chex. Sprinkle liberally with balances. Ding. Dong. The sounds of the Liberty Bell ding freedom dong opportunity ding excellent schools dong quality hospitals when america was born on that hot july day in 1776 the trees in springfield forest were tiny saplings trembling towards the sun and as they were nourished by mother earth

so too did our fledgling nation find strength in the simple ideals of equality and justice who would have thought such mighty oaks or such a powerful nation could grow out of something so fragile so pure thank you yeah i'm sure when i saw this as a nine-year-old i thought these are good essays yeah yeah but the competition is pretty hot here oh god every i think you know for a time i thought the recipe essay was the funniest but i love the strong invective that the mobile alabama kid has and to describe the american non-voter like that's what makes it he sees as the height of cowardice to not vote which that i mean that article exists today like that article could be published i think today in at the very least politico i would think if not new york uh if not washington post i would think

that matt do you have a favorite they would say they they talk that way about not voting but they they wouldn't use those kind of terms anymore they would just say that you were harming marginalized people by not voting or something like that's true that would be the that would be more of the crux of it though you know that this this kid he can say it in in the words like it's a hillbilly elegy kind of way yeah just like nah you're smiling i feel like that the two the two guys they have uh him and the Ding Dong guy, are also the two of the archetypes of the squad in a World War II movie. Yeah. You got the Bronx guy and you got the hillbilly.

That's true. Our lead is the nerd. I guess that's Lisa. Yes. Yeah. Well, this blue haired girl's a nerd too, but. That's true. Yeah.

She's from Minnesota. Oh, yeah. That's true. She's got a classic nerd voice. Yeah. The three of them could be a squad in a world war ii movie so i mean the recipe for america what a great like one informed electorate paced well with veto power i like how just miss uh i guess the the proportions are so off and just arbitrary like one cup of liberty but three teaspoons of justice yes yeah yeah i think i mean we do have more liberty than justice here i'd agree with that yeah i believe the essay uh the recipe essay is performed

by lona williams she's in the credits there and reese reacts to her like oh yeah lona's in here yeah she was one of the kids they say uh lona williams was the writer's assistant at the time she would go on to write and executive produce the film Drop Dead Gorgeous and work on a bunch of other stuff. Oh, wow, that's a classic. There's a reason, too, because she also plays Trong Van Dinh later. And, yeah, she was Algeena Mike Reese's assistant. And she had been in beauty pageants as a younger woman.

So she would play Amber Dempsey in Lisa the Beauty Queen. And she would play the beauty pageant uh the last year's like miss american girl winner i believe at the beginning of um all right yeah our name marge where she said like she was apologizing for what she said at the united nations that's right yeah so she carried this uh this interest in beauty pageants to like the movies with drop that gorgeous which i love that fit like that was about as dark as darkest comedy film mainstream comedy films got them like characters just get killed in that over and over like there's so much death death in it and on top of that like denise richards was born to play that role like just just like her role in in uh starship troopers

for her to be the queen bee in drop dead andorgeous. And Kirstie Alley, like, perfectly cast. Oh, man, and the woman from West Wing, she's so, and mom, she's so good in that as, like, the drunk mom in that show. Yeah, anyway, I love Drop Dead Gorgeous. That's great. I wish they'd have called it Dairy Queens. I wish they'd have stuck with that name. I didn't know that was the original name.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Drop Dead Gorgeous, it works, too. And, yeah, from the original script lisa's speech got extended a bit i think they you know more for for time than extra details uh in the script it originally just ends with her final beach about like uh and and from the those saplings so pure she scores well i love the jingoism's one of the categories that's so great the the judges like it uh they think that she must be it has to be the father writing and it can't be realistic i this is maybe my favorite line in the episode though i mean it's gonna play a real quick clip here

mr simpson i'd like to ask you a few questions about your daughter's essay lisa will you excuse us okay we the purple what the hell was that that's so good like yeah what a terror he's he's just like stage mom for inspiring uh patriotic essays uh i can see why the kid would have i mean honestly we the purple wasn't that pretty much uh one of obama's like key speeches like right america yeah i noticed true oh my god they anticipated obama's rise to power right there yeah i mean they were literally simpsons writers were classmates with obama in in harvard like i believe it's dan graney who was a classmate with Obama. Oh my God, they gave him the idea. And you know what?

I'm noticing we're hearing a ton of Hank Azaria in season three onwards, because I think he's more available. He stopped going out for pilots because, folks, this is the season in which Herman's Head began. And he is a cast member on Herman's Head. So he's in the Fox family. He's not auditioning anymore he's got a sitcom he doesn't have one foot out the door thinking he's like gonna be the tragedy of Hank Azaria's life is that he spent the 90s thinking he'd be he's very good friends

with Matt Perry and he dated Helen Hunt both of them became like two of the biggest sitcom stars in the 90s and he thought he was gonna be that And he was, but not in the way he wanted to be. And like in his WTF interview, he said for a long time, it was very hard for him to deal with the fact that his friends and lovers were much more successful than he was in the thing he wanted to do. And Herman said, wouldn't it? Surprisingly, Herman said not as big as friends and mad about you back in the 90s. But yeah, I guess you're right. He's much more as big as friends and mad about you back in the 90s but yeah I guess

you're right he's he's much more available now as there is so he's just playing like characters left and right I also that the kid who's being told we the purple like he's dressed like Paul Revere that's also just a great like this kid brought the showmanship to it too but it couldn't it couldn't win it for him uh so the whole speech towards homer is also uh added in adr in this original script it's just you can see how it's actually posed in the animation lisa is watching from afar and you're not supposed to hear lisa you're just supposed to play it in reaction but i think they realized it doesn't it could use dialogue instead so they put it in later and i just like the homer just goes like are you interested in anything and it turns into a sobriety test yes at the end uh mr simpson i'd

like to ask you a few questions about your daughter's essay lisa will you excuse us okay we the purple what the hell was that are you a professional writer are you interested in politics or government? Mm-mm. Are you interested in anything? Mm-mm. Could you touch your nose for me? Mm-mm.

Hmm. Lisa, after meeting your father, I've decided to award you an additional five points. Congratulations. You and your family are going to Washington. Woo-hoo! Who would have guessed reading and writing would pay off? And I couldn't help, at the time of this recording,

you guys on Chapo just did a great episode about a profile on J.D. Vance. And I couldn't help but think of him here as like, once they meet Homer and where lisa came from they like her even more they're like okay you're going straight to the top like we're gonna give you a scholarship right to the ivy leagues like that lisa is is in a way profiting off of how bad her her parents look to the fancy folks yeah she is very got she has the jd vance vance arc for sure that's how she becomes president she's yeah i i get why people would want to envision like oh and someday lisa even becomes

president but i would want her to not be president i don't know i feel like she did it makes me sad to think that lisa could be president someday but i i suppose it's inspiring to some folks but when she becomes president in that future like everything fucking sucks like america's just at the end the deficit rag is finally caught up with america in that future we're humming it walking down the street yeah and also just great i love this shot of homer saying who would have guessed reading and writing would pay off what a great line but the second act is basically a part of something i missed just because of how uh relatively young i am i'm almost 40 but i i wasn't flying on planes until the late 90s so i missed the era in which you got all these amenities yes yeah it's a very different time for uh for plane travel as homer can just ask for a

million things if somebody throws a bag of a tiny tiny bag of pretzels at me on an airplane now i feel very lucky i'm like yes i got those i'm not eating them right now because they'll break my teeth but i'll i'll eat them when i get home uh yeah i and also when you could just write a joke about a steward being gay you just have like just like it's an effeminate it's an effeminate man who works on an airline. That's just, that's the joke. I think, I mean, well, in season six, we'll learn that Marge is terrified of flying and we see her for like a few seconds. I choose to believe she's completely zanned out of her mind.

They just, they doped her up. She's just staring at Maggie happily. She doesn't know where she is. Yes. I choose to believe that too. She's having, or if not medicated, she's having a dissociative episode. Yes, exactly. Those two things.

But for continuity Simpsons nerds like myself, yes, you just have to tell yourself that's how Marge can fly on this airplane. And these days I feel like I have no space for a laptop on an airplane. Like I wouldn't open up my laptop on an airplane at all. Yeah, I have to say, if you work on a plane a plane you're sick and that mostly i'm just jealous of you because i'm too uh tall of stature to do anything comfortably even sit so the idea of just having a laptop in front of me i can't do it

no no i guess too the all these jokes here are about the simpsons have seemingly never had a vacation before and all of this is just novel and amazing to them to be on an airplane to to stay in a hotel like all the stuff of them in a hotel they're just like uh just amazed by every single thing it's about how simple they are i guess and this is before they've by 10 years later in the show the simpsons have gone to literally every continent and they're so out of touch with their simple past uh by that point bart is also distracted in uh in the cockpit another like very pre-9-11 joke of bart in the cockpit and pressing a button that terrifies everyone oh yeah uh yeah i just i like how quietly patronizing the pilot is like this is like the uh

the handlebar on your tricycle little boy yeah tricycle yeah yeah i love that's another great no like he doesn't the guy doesn't freak out yeah just it's uh you know calm and collected like all airline pilots are just like no meanwhile homer causes uh i would think people were trampled to death as from homer screaming on that play there yeah we point out this is their first vacation i feel like uh even in season 12 they have to win a contest to go anywhere yes yeah it's always a contest or something like that there's never at least at the point that we're doing in the show there's never enough money just to go to a place really or when they you know when they went to

tokyo it was only because they had learned from chuck garabedi and how to squeeze every penny right and that was how they saved and they stole it from uh the flanders that's right yeah also you know that when they went to detroit they did a long road trip like this is the first time they've other than bart flying to france this is their first time on an airplane in the series and i think a lot of this bart stuff is just really low effort mischief gags but it's the first time they're letting bart free into the world so i'll allow it like the joke of just hitting the elevator buttons is not like anything inspired but it's still fun to see bart do that for the first time they're letting Bart free into the world, so I'll allow it. The joke of just hitting the elevator buttons is not like anything inspired,

but it's still fun to see Bart do that for the first time. He's a little bastard. He didn't have his little bastard traveling kit, which has much more sophisticated gags. You know, like you said, Bob, I also wish George Meyer was on the commentary. I love Julie Kavner. She's great.

But her on this commentary, she is just like so like, isn't that cute? Oh, look at that. It's so nice to see them travel. Yes. And she just says like, oh, that Bart with his pranks and you just want to go, you kid. Just again, for such that she has this to say on an episode that is so like political

and has deeper meanings to it. She's just like, all she sees are Bart's pr pranks it seems like kind of a waste on the on the microphone as maybe it was the only day she was available like around but uh yeah and again another great gag Homer I just love Homer saying oh look he's got the same name we do just walks right by the limo oh so so good and yes uh this is also when they boo the irs in this cute little clip look march that guy has the same last name we do taxi oh look homer the irs oh boo yourself i like they gave it to the droopy voice guy to say well boo yourself and yeah they stay at the water gate as well the uh the thing i've uh yeah we i i guess the water gate's still open wouldn't

it be if i would guess yeah yeah i'm still there yeah can you can you stay in the room that got burgled yes i mean i don't know about that but i know that it is still open i think yeah i know it's also uh like condos like people live there. Bob Dole lived there. Really? RIP to recently to pass. He barely outlived Norm MacDonald. Just barely. But he did it.

I think like sometimes they don't disclose what room crimes happen into the public just because they don't want people going into the rooms and stealing things. Is it is it well documented like it happened in this this specific room? I mean, yeah, it's where the Democratic democratic national committee headquarters was which makes me think it wasn't a room it's like a sweet room but like a suite or something okay i don't know the specific one though it should be a tour i think yeah i gotta stay you know if i ever go if i'm ever uh i was gonna say oh when i go to dc i'm like wait why would I want to go there? I think some of your most unhappiest podcast trips, Matt, have been to Washington, D.C., haven't they been? I mean, I always had a good time. It's a grim environment, but that can be its own inspiration.

The biggest bummer to travel to is always the U.K. I mean, nothing can beat England. Just an absolute depressing hellhole okay that's sad to me that what dc is so much better than i've never been to england so that's uh it sounds sounds like a bad bad time i went for 72 hours and i got a covid style super flu and uh so thumbs down for me as well in this podcast but yes as they explore the water gate yeah bart does some prank stuff it's just all like hotel observations like oh yeah every there's mints on your pillow

that would suck to fall asleep on hey you get a free shoehorn and homer is so simple he's impressed by it and the first hour i wish they'd have done it more the blank goes on blank goes off blank goes on blank they didn't need to kill as much time. Oh, as time went on. Yeah, that's true. The first Benzies bit, that feels more like the kind of Matt Groening edition of like just realistic childhood behavior of trying to prank your younger sibling on the road of just make up. Well, I call first Benzies and you just make up a thing to have a fight over while on a vacation with a sibling.

It's classic kid behavior. Also, that Homer does not recognize Bart's voice when he prank phone calls him, too, which is pretty good. And then one of the most brilliant sign gags of the show, I think, when they go to the Reading Digest luncheon, the sign says, brevity is dot, dot, dot, wit. That's so, I love that joke so much like to to readers digestify the the classic shakespeare quote brevity is the soul of wit and just squeeze it down to brevity is wet like that's it's just fucking hilarious to me i love that and faith crowley

perfect name for the patriotism editor like i I was sure you guys would have beat that up on Choppo at some point a Faith Crowley type or just run into a Faith Crowley it's like right up there with Ainsley Hayes. Yeah definitely Alistair's great-granddaughter. Yeah that's great yeah there were so I feel like in the 90s there were so many like the every conservative woman was named Faith in the media if you you were one of the blonde media ladies, your name was Faith. And to have Crowley, one of the most famous Satanists ever as the last name,

it's so great. I wasn't even thinking of that, but that's true. Yeah. That's very clever. This is when they meet up with Faith, and I think she's played perfectly too here. Lisa, I'm Faith Crowley, patriotism editor of Reading Digest.

Oh, I love your magazine. My favorite section is how to increase your word power. That thing is really, really, really good. Well, good. Lisa, I'd like you to meet some of the other finalists. This is Trong Van Dinh and Maria Dominguez. Hello. Maria is the national Spelling Bee Champion,

and Trong has won both the Westinghouse Talent Search and the NFL Punt, Pass, and Kick competition. Have either of you ever run into any problems because of your superior ability? Sure, I guess. Oh, me too. These are special VIP badges. They'll get you into places other tourists never see. Miss, what does the I stand for? Important. These are special VIP badges. They'll get you into places other tourists never see.

Miss, what does the I stand for? Important. Ooh, how about the V? Very. Oh, and Miss, just one more question. Person. Ah. What does the I stand for again?

That's great. Small role by Maggie Roswell, but she really sells just how quietly annoyed she is with Homer yeah just to talk to him at all I just love is like really really really good good well good just like that she gives up like I'm not talking to you anymore and I wish they did more with Lisa's neediness she finally finds uh people with something in common with her and she immediately kind of pushes them away by just grabbing on to them's just like you you you're gifted you have gifted kid syndrome too don't you sure i guess oh thank you i guess the needy desperation again very realistic for a sad little gifted kid like her i i have some small uh possibly interesting nuggets about these awards that trong won so the westinghouse talent search uh it's an annual prize based on scientific

scholarship it is now sponsored by regeneron oh of course and uh the nfl punt pass and kick competition uh the nfl stopped supporting it in 2017 so now it's just like a regional thing and it is for kids it's for kids of different like age groups pass and kick god damn the country's really going downhill it's Going down the tube. Trump was asleep at the switch. We don't even care about cultivating our children's punt, pass, and kicking ability. Meanwhile, in China, I guarantee you that they are out there in the countryside scouring for punt, pass, and kick abilities amongst the youth and cultivating it.

You can just see footballs flying over that big wall of theirs every day they're training you know when you leave it up to the private sector they're just gonna let it lay fallow you know eventually the nfl won't need it no more that's they they're gonna have robots playing football it's just gonna be uh it's just gonna be cletus from fox sports uh that robot looks pretty cool i'd watch like 22 of those robots smashing against each other i don't actually yeah let's just do that why not they mentioned on the commentary though that like the kids who win those punt passing kick competitions are giants like very physically gifted kids who do not look like trong as well not a little wiener

essay writer yes yeah i also like uh this this comes up much more later in his uh essay but i also like the uh for trong the character they create is the perfect version of the model minority stereotype that so many asian americans are like shoved into or forced upon them especially in conservative uh spaces like readers digest like he's i think he certainly is used there to be like see can't like to guilt other immigrants for not being as great as he is you know that's certain i i would assume i would assume he was going to beat lisa anyway just for what he needed to represent in winning i i would bet but could not help but identify with lisa's neediness as a child of just like but also just other gifted kids like i guess like sure like lisa has much deeper

problems than just being a gifted kid out of touch i think so yes they head over to the white house first of all a cute little joke that everybody's happy outside the white house no no anger there and so yes this uh this is a fairly accurate version of the bowling alley that uh that is in the apparently still is in the basement of the white house was installed in 73 by nixon and two lane bowling alley that's still an alleged fact oh yes yeah i about his back-to-back 300 games i so other than references to this episode the only other thing i could find about nixon's bowling history was an archive 71 New York Times article that was written before the bowling alley was built. But about how like Nixon in 71 had gotten like a 229 and like he's getting better at bowling.

Like that was the New York Times had to say about it. But I like he was the one who put the bowling bowling alley in the White House, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I don't think it's still there, though. You know, I had. I think it was removed afterwards. I'm not sure, though.

I had looked this up. There were the best I could find where there were articles that were like, oh, what's details? Biden's moving into the White House. What's he got there? And they still listed the bowling alley as present. But I got to think that's like wasted real estate. Like what? What president since Nixon is still there? But yeah, Nixon put it in 69. bowling alley is present but i gotta think that's like wasted real estate like what what president

since nixon has ever even used it still there but yeah nixon put it in 69 dude loved to bowl i do wonder who bowled among the presidents uh i bet that obama did a couple of ironic bowling nights yeah for sure this is what poor people do yeah it's fun well and also just for like history's sake he could be like let it not be said in my biography i did not use the bowling alley when i was president i did it was all it was all legacy building i would assume trump never once touched that bowling alley like no never uh-uh zero biden no no no sports no he golfs only by kai he's a mummy he's not doing anything well okay sure he they don't let him go downstairs on a company.

He's not going in the basement. Yeah, that is in the basement. I would say Clinton, I don't think, was bowling. He was too busy doing perversions. I think George W. Bush might have bowled a couple times. Might have bet he'd bowl. But I think that they probably did it like once or twice, and then the novelty wore off, and then they never did it again.

It is, I got to say, it's got to be a lot of wasted real estate in the white house like it's just you know it's it's like your pool house or whatever like i guess it's over i don't know it's kind of just like a hallway it's not really taking up too much space i suppose i am yeah the nick the nixon was such a bowler that's very interesting apparently true i i looked this up too apparently truman had built a bowling alley like adjacent to the white house but not on the white house House grounds. It was Nixon who added it to the basement. Nixon also was the president who most enjoyed going on the White House yacht, which doesn't exist anymore. That was sold by Jimmy Carter as a budget-cutting stunt, basically, during the stagflay era uh but nixon loved to watch patton on the yacht and just get shit paid man you know i give credit i give nixon credit for that because he was a guy who he genuinely enjoyed like being president even though he

was miserable the whole time he did like use the perks i respect that i for i didn't know about this presidential yacht that we lost. I wish we could have had yachts for all the presidents in our lifetime. I just want another drunk president, really. Yes. Yeah. Again, Biden. We've had like two teetotalers in a row.

Back-to-back teetotalers. It's depressing. Oh, my God. Three out of four of the last presidents have been either dry drunks or teetotalers. And then Obama, who you know is a moderate beer with dinner type guy. Yeah, we have not had a hammered president since Nixon. The yacht, I mean, why get rid of it anyway? It's not like there's still Air Force One.

There's still Camp David. It's not like there's still. It was just a sign. It's like, look, we're economizing too. It looks bad to have a yacht while everybody's struggling now now i'm surprised that reagan didn't bring back the yacht and hit when he became honestly yeah they got rid of the solar panels they should have brought back the yacht yeah uh but yes uh then as they they explore it some more they then run into barbara bush she was bathing and she must respect the power of the vip badge yeah a fun fact about her so uh matt was on the episode we did uh two bad neighbors like four years ago she died in between

when that went live on patreon and the free feed so that is the last uh the last member of the simpsons uh talking simpsons body count yes yeah wow and then uh and then bush died after our uh since the last time we talked about him on the show, too. The HW, yeah. And, of course, this is four months before the entire George Bush Simpsons kerfluffle that happened in the news media, which was... I mean, I've got the clip. I could just play it if you guys want.

For history's sake here. We need a nation closer to the Waltaltons than the simpsons huh hey we're just like the waltons we're praying for an end to the depression too so there you go yeah zingeroo you know i feel like i was uh as a kid that was all i heard the the bush administration made fun of whenever whenever they would try to comment on pop culture they would just look like weird funny it was this and murphy brown both of them just did not do them any favors as far as i could tell as a as a kid uh paying attention to politics very lightly well uh barbara bush visited my grade school uh in 1992 in the run-up to the 92 election because i i lived in

youngstown ohio which is just the crater in the ground that's been abandoned by all industry since like 1972 and they've been promising like every four years politicians pretend to care about a lot of things but they really pretend to care about that city in particular because it's such a like just a giant metaphor for just a de-industrialization and everything but yeah she showed up and uh all the kids in my class talked about how she was on the simpsons and that was it that's all we took out of it like oh yeah it was funny when she was on the simpsons right but yeah uh that was my one brush with a bush was uh when i was 10 wow now my you know my dad was your typical republican dad but he loved the bush

family in particular which is still so strange to me like why why one would like the bushes over like i don't know he's i've tried to never talk about politics with him so i don't even know if he it seemed to me at a time he didn't even like trump because he was like he didn't like that he clowned on the bush family so much but uh i my dad is the rare like bush loving bush loving regular guy in republican voterdom it's it's strange is he the guy who would vote for the biden shaney ticket that tom friedman is imagining i still don't think he would no i think he'd just sit out i think that even then he'd still i mean i don't even think he loved shaney all that much and certainly not a woman and he wouldn't be a deal

breaker yes there's that aspect as well like most people i mean yeah that that friedman article again an amazing article that you come for the headline and you stay for the praising of israel's government it's a beautiful article you guys talked about but yes the uh the bathtub she mentions was added in 1894 which would mean it predates the only famous presidential bathtub the taft one which would have been in the the start of the century not 1894 i think like 1909 or something yeah it's the one taft fact we all know although uh i don't know was trump uh taft sized i think people are just larger now i i actually when he became president i i don't remember who did it

but somebody did a fascinating twitter thread breaking down Taft versus Trump to argue that while Taft might have weighed more than Trump contextually, Trump was still fatter than Taft. And it was convincing to me. Yeah. Trump Trump occupies more girth units, I think. And what Taft is like, he's yeah. For him, historically, that he just goes down as the fat president. Was he the only president who after, like he was in the Supreme Court, right? Like after being president.

Yes, yeah. It's like his real dream job. He finally got it after his anonymous stay in the White House. No president does that. No, nobody, like he was the only one right he's the only one yeah that's uh but again i that was one of those things where i learned it in like 15 years ago i thought like why why do we only know this guy is the fat president when he's he's much more historically interesting than just like the fat guy with it as people like to point

out he busted more trusts than teddy Roosevelt in shorter time in office. That's true. Yeah, I guess, you know, he didn't have the charisma of Roosevelt, I suppose. Like, Teddy got all the... No, that was it. It was just the progressive movement shorn of the charismatic mascot. Are you telling me that this is all a popularity contest? They then head to the mint where Homer drools on a bronson voice guy

and i like that the the the guide gives them a very corny dad joke about not giving out samples and homer is legitimately insulted like lousy cheap country yeah i do enjoy the tour guides like self-satisfied he like lasts before he tells the joke yeah just because he's so used to telling this he loves that's that's the guys who become docents are the people who love telling jokes like that yeah they head over to the national air and space museum which again when i visited that as a with the family i was like all right where's that spirit of saint louis where bart sat in like it was okay so when we went there i was almost uh 19 and i was much more into any reference to the simpsons there or also they had a uh they

had a star wars exhibit there of like a collection of star wars memory archie bunker's chair was hanging out there too that as well yes yeah that that meant so much more i mean look did i did i stop and look at one of the bill of rights like yeah, yeah, I did just to say I did it, but I, I didn't really care. Same with, uh, same with just looking in the reflecting pool.

I was like, there, I did it. Let's get, let's look at Boba Fett's original armor guys. It's right here. It's a nice little joke that Bart knows a little about history that he thinks that's a war plane,

the spirit of St. Louis. Yes. Yes. That is great. That's a great joke. And also the, like,

how do you even get up there? That is great that's a great joke and also the like how do you even get up there that's that's the same in mr plow they'll do the sequel joke of this is him in bonnie and clyde's car uh and of course he'll drive hitler's car in uh the carney's episode with with earnest in it but so here's another big cut from the script they cut a scene in between this part and then going to the washington monument they went to the smithsonian they actually did write a smithsonian scene uh and in it maggie sleeps inside of a love american style bed and homer gets misty-eyed looking at archie bunker's chair so this was the joke they reused in season 10's make room for lisa okay in that one homer destroys the bill of rights while sitting in archie bunker's

chair but yeah they uh then you go to the washington monument where i like it that marge is the one who makes the joke that everyone does that the washington monument is not alike in erect penis which is just hard not to think about when you're there it's great when marge gets to be fun yeah that it didn't occur to homer i love marge's little sneaky whisper like she's kind of entertained by like hey don't you we can't hear what she's saying but she's like hey doesn't that look like a dick just imagine march saying that is great then we head into a congressman's office we apparently so when this episode came out, logging industry professionals took issue with this and snagged a few headlines. Being mad at Matt Groening, like some industry guys like he doesn't care about all the hardworking loggers out there attacking loggers.

And then Groening, you know, did some interviews saying like, no, screw this. Like, you guys are awful. Like, clear cutting is terrible. Like, I don't care that i offended you guys which that was nice to see as as always whenever one of these things happens like that industry group of lobbyists would be doing their jobs poorly if they didn't try to get headlines off of the simpsons talking about logging and you know what uh george meyer as well he was he didn't write that episode but they credit him a lot in the one where Lisa stays in the tree to prevent logging. I do think conservation of that type is really important to George Meyer.

I think that's why. Out of all the things that push Lisa over the edge, it's destroying a forest that would do it. And the destruction of national parks. Obama's in the news with that lately, isn't he? Destroying some parks to make. Yeah, he's just annihilating a park in Chicago for his interactive presidential experience. Jeez, that's good. Good times. Good times.

It's not like it could go anywhere else in Chicago. Let's go right there. But yeah, this Bob Arnold guy, he's a great design. What a perfect example of like a young congressman who's kind of wormy and taking money and ready to move up. But I got to say, the money they're giving him, it feels misspent on a representative, doesn't it? That's like senator money. What can a representative really do? An individual one, yeah.

They'd have to be on a pretty key committee uh to be able to single handedly get something through like that but maybe he is maybe bob arnold is a is a is a senior uh wheeler dealer who knows yeah and mr smith uh he's chosen to be a senator and he's chosen because he's a rube and they expect him to not do anything no i mean well what's the the classic line like representative the senator is like chicken shit and chicken salad like that's the the classic line like uh representative to senator is like uh chicken shit and chicken salad like that's the comparison but bob arnold he's a great design of just this like you know evil evil congressman guy uh and and lisa meeting him is uh another of my favorite lines in the episode in this in this next clip well jerry you're aware of a lobbyist and i'd

like to give you a logging permit i would but but this isn't like burying toxic waste. People are going to notice those trees are gone. Congressman, this is where it gets awkward. I never quite know how to put this. I just want to offer me a bribe. What is it? It's that little girl from Springfield who wrote the essay. Could be a good photo op. Uh, sure, fine. So, uh, where do we... Not here. I've got a little place that I use for these, uh, matters. Call me tonight. Well, hi there. You must be Lisa Simpson. Hello, sir. Lisa, you're a doer. And who knows, maybe someday you'll be a congressman or a senator.

We have quite a few women senators, you know. Only two, I checked. You're a sharp one. Well, how about a few pictures? Touch shot always plays in the sticks. Oh, isn't that nice? Now there is a politician who cares if i ever vote it'll be for him i this happened in the governor uh burns governor episode as well that the unwashed masses

who are easily tricked by this were represented by barney and mo like they said the same reaction when burns was talking about uh you know gave his excuse for the three eyed fish. They say, like, I wish the government would get off his back. Yeah. Instantly, they just fall for it. Like every time I it's great casting for it to be Barney and Moe tricked by this. And now there are many more women senators, and one of them is the villain of our day. Oh, yes.

Yeah. She's no, it's yeah. Matt, I certainly had to look this up and did not know do you off the top of your head know the the either of the two uh female senators in in the fall of 1991 oh oh damn no i did not it was uh maybe k bailey hutchinson uh you know that i think that's in the next uh in the 92 groups of the the two were nancy landon casbaum from kansas oh yes and uh barbara mcculskey of maryland those were the two two female centers and of course the next year in 92 was the influx of uh it made a lot of papers four women were elected as senator pat patty murray of washington carol

mosley braun of illinois and uh barbara boxer and yes i had feinstein you know sharp as a tack yep yeah she's oh my god man she's still still at it still and she was old then she was pretty she was kind of old then in in 92 but yeah, to think Barbara Boxer retiring in what, early 70s? That seems crazy now. Why'd you bother? Same with when Harry Reid died recently, I thought like... When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell

our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance. That's really big on care. Did I mention that we care wait why did he retire he was only 77 he should have he should have died in office like everybody else does now but i i like this moment of lisa showing like she's being given just a line by this guy like oh you know what you'll end up a female senator we have so many women senators and lisa's like no no you don't there's there's two out of a hundred like there's nothing and the guy is deflated like you're pretty sharp like oh my my lie didn't work on you like that's that's a great little moment for lisa but also this bribery scene is so like it's such a great like little sketch moment of it's like an awkward trying to ask someone on a

date moment except it's like ah boy you know this is awkward uh how do i give you money the illustrations of his before and after are great where before the trees are menaced they're like crushing uh deer and there's just all these monsters hiding in them and then it's behind me as my background they're just animals are having a tea party they're dancing around the stumps you can see the rainbow in the backgrounds. It's beautiful. I mean, that's not even parody. You know, like, that's just how every that's the main job of lobbyist is to just draw like, oh, this current thing. It actually is bad. This seems good, but it's actually bad.

And if we cleared out this land or, you know, put this pipeline here, everything's better. Like, everybody would love this pipeline. But yes, the other it took me again looking at the closed captions that line tot shot always plays in the sticks i i i always misheard it like it means a picture with a little kid a t-o-t tot uh yeah tot shot i i never heard the term tot shot before have you heard that you're the term tots yes i've heard of it yeah i know it's not like uh it was not a i would rarely hear somebody call if so if i heard somebody use the term tot to refer to a kid i would think they were being like very arched or they're like uh they

used every other synonym for kid they could use like no nobody would use i mean you know yes toys for tots all the all the usage of the word tots, but yeah, I've never. They're the children of potatoes, right? Yes. But yeah, the, it's the next day, Lisa can't sleep. She asked the margin Homer to go with her. They instead tell her like, no, walk by yourself. Eight year old through the, through the streets of Washington, DC.

Good luck. That's how different things were then but but yes then there's a historical figure who uh for the longest time i would have thought oh that's it must be a real person right i'm sure i did and it's it's such i want to say this has to be george meyer because i love how she's behind something that's probably very important but sounds boring the floor mott rebellion and then uh her legacy was on a very unpopular coin like susan b anthony yes yeah the 75 cent piece uh winifred beecher how is uh yeah she sounds like a real person person and it definitely fits with a piece of like george myers last episode he wrote was bart versus thanksgiving

and lisa's centerpiece is a tribute to lesser known feminist heroes like and so this is a continuation of that uh yeah i've seen it's likely the name is a combination of harriet beecher stowe the writer of uncle tom's cabin and julia warren howe the writer of the battle hymn of the republic both of which were you know abolitionist suffragette like a lot of they were activists around the same time that the winifred beecher Howe character would exist too. And of course, yeah, the 75 cent piece is a reference to the very unpopular Susan B. Anthony dollar coins from 79 to 81. I mean, as a kid, I briefly had a time of coin collecting. And I do get it like it feels like a quarter.

It feels like a quarter in your pocket. It was just a poor design. Nothing against Susan B. Anthony. like it feels like a quarter like that's it feels like a quarter in your pocket it was just a poor design nothing against susan b anthony but it's like it's uh you know if you're feeling around in your pocket and you can't tell if it's a quarter or a dollar it's it's it's a poor coin well now no one takes cash anymore so it doesn't matter no i mean i've heard i'd heard for years the like the government wanted to switch over to coins for the dollar bills like a dollar bill most countries don't have dollar bills like sink, the dollar bill, most countries don't have dollar bills, like the lowest unit bill, because they wear out too quickly. It's not worth it.

They generally have everything below like a five euro or whatever in coins because they're more durable. And they've done things like that. I remember there was a huge push for the George Washington dollar coin. They had commercials where George Washington, his head, the animated head on the dollar bill, driving around on a bike voiced by Michael Keaton. The problem is they kept the dollar bills in circulation. You have to take them out to make it work. You have to actually stop making the dollar bills in order to get people to switch. But that people I switch but that people i guess they thought people would get too annoyed by that then there was and so it never happened

so that they just were trying to do like cast sunstein nudge shit to get people to switch and they never did first try it excuse me anthony and then there were the saccageoia ones too which every and i think i think it helped people didn't there there were folks who didn't want to switch over to coins regardless and i think it probably helped him that they could be just like also complaining like oh we're getting forced to learn about these historical women who cares but even like you said even when they stick George Washington's face on it they're like here we gave you the old white man you wanted the the the greatest founding father ever here he is is. Aren't you going to use it now? Even then, they wouldn't use it. Like, yeah, I wish dollar coins were. If you want to understand America's just fundamental dysfunction as a government,

the fact that we still have dollar bills and pennies is really all you need to know. And now the two things that most countries, most other countries that are similar capitalist political economies have gotten rid of and we've not managed to do either one of them. And speaking of dysfunction, at least twice during the pandemic, I've tried to get quarters and they're just like, oh, sorry, banks out of money. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

I just even two months ago, I was like, so quarters, right? They're like, no. I was like, wow, really? We're still we're still in this quarter. So it makes me feel good about our country's future like yeah uh yes but so lisa goes to this i guess too it's a great joke they're like no no way in washington dc would they use up that much space for a memorial to win for like to any to susan b anthony or any woman. There'd be a plaque. Yes, yeah, like a bench maybe, you know? And that floor mop rebellion sounds really,

like that's a great fictional, you know, I would guess, you know, workers' rights thing to make up too, like to call it the floor mop one, meaning that it would seemingly be a bunch of, like, domestic workers who wanted fairer labor laws and went on strike. Like, that's a great, great like and i just love the her with her like holding the mop up stridently it's like it's a great design on her too but this

is when lisa finds out that in a great bit of writing her wanting to go to an unpopular place is why it is the perfect place for graft to be done in the open because literally no one would ever go there or care about this person in american history and so it's where they can just change the the classic uh you know halliburton full of money grainy makes this point on the commentary but i do think evil people just laugh like this excitedly over all of this these kinds of transactions but yes uh me me bob me and you were talking about this beforehand we had to do some research because it feels like 800 Twitter things ago. What year did this happen?

It was only two years ago. Oh, Christ. So, Matt, I'm not sure if you remember. Do you remember when Lisa crying and tearing up the essay was part of the bigger political conversation on Twitter? What? Exactly, exactly exactly yeah well so uh take your mind back uh to trump's state of the union address in early 2020 oh uh nancy pelosi ripping up the copy yes yes pelosi rips up the copy yeah he ripped she rips up the copy behind him within a day mike pompeo then tweets out a picture of lisa crying tearing it up to

tumac pelosi which again i yeah that's a big that's been a thing recently like the last couple years because uh ted cruz said the thing about how the democrats are the lisa simpson party and they're the republicans are the bart and homer and marge party which they're not the marge party i i disagree with that but and bart's more of an anarchist but i mean yeah i know yeah and then on top of that like there was also there were more than a few i believe because marge did a they did a clap back with marge saying it but somebody compared kamala harris's voice to Marge Simpson. Was it her voice or just her affect?

I guess maybe her affect. Because Marge is more eloquent than Kamala Harris, at least at this point in history. As well, yes. But I feel, again, I don't really like, obviously, we all have the correct political leanings and views on the Simpsons, but it just brings me down when Republicans try to use Simpsons tweets. I mean, Ted Cruz, his one way of trying to look human in 2015 and 16 was like, oh, I can do an impression of Ned Flanders. I actually love the Simpsons. I was like, fuck off.

I believe he had like a real like, here's I'm Mr. Burns. Excellent. I'm Homer, doe. It was real bad. bad bad times bad times this was pre-beard so you even had to look at like an uglier version of it too yeah yeah this uh so this scene was a big again if even though it was just two years ago because it happened right before the pandemic and during the heat of the primary season i had completely forgotten the context of it i thought it was ted cruz me too yeah it's warren to lisa but it was like no it's pompeo talking about pelosi not that liz

warren didn't get called lisa simpson a lot as well like and also she i think welcomed the lisa comparisons herself too i think until uh it was brought up that there's an episode in which lisa pretends to be a native american to get into a college or get into a school or something. And then they kind of pulled that back a little. I was just like when Liz Warren had to pull back or like, she'd proclaimed herself a fan of Game of Thrones right during the horrible last season where she had to be like, oh, you know what? I'm not Daenerys.

I'm not. I take that back. Don't compare me to Daenerys. Boy, that 2020 2020 primary what a good time that was but anyway so yes Lisa tears up her thing leaves leaves the line the roots of democracy there which I as a final vision of the act that's great like Lisa Lisa learns that like graft and bribery and lies and backroom dealing that's the roots of democracy like that's what she's learning in this moment and in this wake-up call as she tears up her essay and as she'll say like uh how

can i read my essay now i don't believe my own words as as we start the third act and and yes this is uh when they visit the lincoln monument which is i i would say the most direct reference to the mr smith goes to washington in the episode yeah but nobody treats him like a genie in the movie no one no one is talking to him uh actually jimmy stewart i think he visits uh the jefferson memorial first there's like a kind of boring montage of this this wide-eyed the country boy like visiting all these landmarks and i think he goes to the jefferson one first before landing at the uh lincoln one as the last stop on his journey that people go to him to ask like oh what should i buy a car like it's my son won't brush properly that's all great the guy who says he's thinking about having

a mustache that's mr roman burns his would-be ghost writer in blood feud so he just reused that but uh and then of course this the gag of going to the empty thomas jeffrey i mean i'll just play the clip mr lincoln mr lincoln i need your advice what can i do to make this a better country is this a good time to buy a house i can't get my boy to brush proper but i look good with a mustache so i try to see the turpentine, but that just made it worse. Mr. Lincoln? Mr. Lincoln? My name is Lisa Simpson,

and I have a problem. Mr. Jefferson? My name is Lisa Simpson, and I have a problem. I know your problem. The Lincoln Memorial was too crowded. Sorry, sir, it's just... No one ever comes to see me. I don't blame them. Lincoln Memorial was too crowded. Sorry, sir. It's just... No one ever comes to see me. I don't blame them.

I never did anything important. Just the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the dumbwaiter. Maybe I should be going. I caught you at a bad time. Wait! Please don't go. I get so lonely. I love his, I get so lonely. Now, Matt is a person who's a real expert on presidential history and and how the america views them what do you think of this like lincoln versus jefferson argument here that everybody seems to all everybody thinks about lincoln and nobody

thinks about jefferson idea jefferson is i would say his presidential legacy is largely sort of obscured. You don't hear about it too much. He's remembered mostly as an idea guy and as a writer, as the guy who did the Declaration of Independence. And frankly, I think that makes sense because his whole deal, his whole vision for America was pretty undermined by his own actions in office, like the Louisiana Purchase, which he talks about. And he was a nerd, you know? He was crucially also president at a time when it all kind of blurs together, you know? Like those post-Washington presidents, that whole Virginia dynasty era, it was just a bunch of guys in wigs. Whereas Lincoln sort of stands there amongst all the sort of mediocrities and forgotten presidents of the latter half of the 19th century as, you know, this titanic figure who saved the country.

So I think that it probably is a pretty significant difference in attendance as well. It should be. Also, he did not invent the dumb waiter. He lied. He's lying to Lisa Simpson. You know, I think I also think the Lincoln Memorial is more compelling to the average American because it's just a guy who's sitting down. Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. It's just a stunning piece of architecture. Although I do agree with Lewis Mumford that it's kind of the actual design of the Lincoln Memorial really has much less to do with Lincoln than it does to do with the Spanish-American War, which is happening at the same time they built it. Because it really isn't about Lincoln so much as it's about America america like finally coming into its own as a as a nation of destiny and there's an imperial power with all the with all the greek shit well roman or the roman columns yeah well walt disney

saw that and he thought you've seen lincoln sit what if he eventually stood up and that is an exhibit at walt disneyland history came alive there yeah i you know the yeah the well this also this time in jefferson knowledge or or what america thought of them this this joke was like you forget all the things jefferson did well us comedy nerds will remind you with the with this joke here by i feel like the odds jefferson's name was like mud or it's just like the more now we know way more I mean what's not mentioned here is slavery which is what yeah my first thought is with Jefferson these days of just the whole Sally Hemings of it all like that really changed it

and also like I really uh there's a lot of things I don't like in Hamilton but one thing I don't and the performer who plays Thomas Jefferson is a great performer at least in the original cast I'm talking about but that he shows up and he's just like yep i'm the fun guy i'm crazy hey sally hemmings i was like this is a weird way to write thomas jefferson with what we have informationally on him i i don't know especially since as i said he was a nerd he was a persnickety dork i think people have diagnosed him on the spectrum uh across the mists of history he's not a party dude i mean he partied but you know kind of a in in the sweaty fashion of nerds throughout history he couldn't hold a candle to ben franklin in the party department oh no nobody would know

ben franklin was the real party founder everyone knows that apparently dumb waiter invented by uh george cannon but uh jefferson just had them in the white house in monticello so a lot of people assumed he invented it i think that's the story behind it also apparently there's some confusion that what the he referred to and what was at this time referred to as a dumb waiter is actually a lazy susan okay which also sometimes gets attributed to having been invented by jefferson i remember the yeah we i i was always fascinated by lazy susans the uh there's a whole simpsons comic strip in simpsons illustrated the concept was the simpsons get a lazy susan what happens then well speaking of

comic strips so after this bit of uh jefferson this is when the the blinders are off, Lisa. She sees Washington for what it is, an editorial cartoon from the 1800s by Thomas Nast. I mean, I love the drawing of the pigs eating out of a trough of money and wiping their mouth with the American flag. That's such a great drawing, as is the literal fat cat scratching each other's back. From the script, they cut out one extra cartoon joke uh which is there's a man labeled a john q taxpayer being whipped while pulling a cart that has a donkey and elephant riding in it so that's uh i wish they'd have kept that one why not go all the way with these like incredibly like crass obvious metaphors like go all the way with it but yes

lisa becomes a cynical teen which i think like george meyer did this again in separate vocations like it's a very similar but they go even farther with it in that where when lisa finds out she can't be a jazz saxophonist she just gives up on life and just becomes you know a great sullen teen and this is pretty much a similar one for her i just love like i she and she's gotta tell the world like how many of us you know learned like actually thanksgiving isn't about this mama day and you just you have to give that speech like it's a right advantage for a dumb teen to tell your parents this like they've never heard it before we do a quick bit of bark getting

a massage from an adult man which i'm not into that so much now. This is the Mr. Smith territory. Yes. But he should take advantage of Reading Digest. Get as many dollars out of that as you can. And Homer is happy to indulge in that as well. And he's even smoking cigars. And so after that, one last joke about hotels. We get a character the script calls a man much like Mark Russell okay I was literally in this I was wondering uh what his parody name was because they don't say it on this

but I love this like my mom had to explain this character to me but uh and looking at the amount of times he was parodied I appreciate just the contempt tv comedy writers had for this man and uh one thing they don't really get in this parody is whenever you see him, and I looked up clips of Mark Russell, the audience is losing their goddamn minds. They love it. They can't get it out. It's like watching the Beatles' first performance or something. People are screaming in the aisles.

Let's hear about The Deficit Rag. The Deficit Rag rag oh yeah the deficit rag those budget gaps can be a 12-digit drag i'm telling you that's the deficit they really made a mess of it that's the deficit oh and you know what? Harry Shearer, I won't ever talk to him on this show because he hates the Simpsons, but the things he writes, the political parodies he writes, are on this level or worse. I mean, look up my famous example.

My favorite example, rather, is his Peach Boys parody, Waterboarding USA. Yeah. It's real bad. He's a real Mark Russell. Yeah, but that's edgy because it's it's real bad uh he's a real mark russell yeah but like that's edgy because it's about yeah so that makes a difference it's like if it's about the deficit that's corny but if it's about torturing people then that's like uh incisive satire like no i'm sorry you're doing it it's all jib jab to me there's no there's no honor here there's nothing of honor found here i guess i'll give yeah the only thing I'd give Shearer credit for on that is that I

think he cares about something more important. America's torture program and ending it is more important than deficit pearl clutching, I'd say. But other than that, the same level of skill. Yeah. And I don't want to break any hearts out there, but Mark Russell, he first retired in 2010, but then he came back in 2019, sorry, 2016 for a final performance, I think possibly because of Trump. But you can still see videos of him just like in non-performance spaces doing songs about Trump.

And what they really nailed about him is just the showboatingness of him. But they didn't get his like star spangled piano. Oh, they missed that little detail. I missed that. My favorite Mark Russell parody is actually from NewsRadio when Bill Mitchell decides that he wants to become a Mark Russell-style musical parodyist. And I just remember him with the piano in the break room going, Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, special whitewater prosecutor. Yes. Oh, God.

They could just open. yeah i remember the the the elevator doors opening and he's just like they're hitting every uh that's one of the best god damn that that's so good yeah and i was looking at my information on mark russell and it makes me so mad that his hero is tom lehrer i Tom Lehrer spit on him. He's still alive, by the way. Tom Lehrer is so great. He's still alive, amazingly. He's still alive. He wrote like 20 amazing political parody songs in 1968, and that's it. And he went back to teaching math.

I didn't know who Mark Russell was. I learned about him in the 96 election, which also is where, Bob, you dug up another truly great parody here from SN snl at the time it's real good i'll play a quick bit of it here according to the latest polls president clinton leads bob dole of kansas by 16 percentage points uh it's brought to mind this little check mine eyes have seen the latest polls dole 16 16 points before you. The Wall Street Journal says the genius of Mark Russell is that he takes songs we all know

and changes the words from what they regularly are and puts in things about politics that are real funny. I understand Ross Perot wasn't allowed in the televised debate. Who's got a song about all that? Ross Perot.

Ross Perot. Ross Perot. all that and that's it that's it i love it so i mean matt you're an snl scholar this is a rancid year for the show but mark mckinney was really trying i think hired a bunch of ringers yeah mark mckeon and uh and mark mckinney yeah yeah i went garofalo and chris elliott yes but he's elliott yeah but that mark russell thing like the mark mckinney's version of it is he's so self-satisfied just tickled with everything he's doing like that's so good it's one of the it's like snl puts some stuff on youtube that's on youtube you have to see the audience just losing their minds at all of this. And just the effusive praise the Will Ferrell announcer is giving with all these quotes.

It's real good. It's only like a three minute sketch. It's perfect. See, and that's, you know, I'm not saying I don't see this in no comedy today, but at the very least, I wish, I like that in the 90s, there were comedy writers who,

their offense that this was not political. It's that it was so hack. They had to like mock how awful Mark Russell was at being a performer and just how bad he was. Like, I miss that meanness. Nobody's that mean anymore. I feel like everybody now just even has the thought of like, well, they worked hard.

You know, you can't I don't want to make fun of this song from hamilton that i don't think is very good he worked really hard on it other people like it like they just say to have jokes that mark russell is a talentless hack like i i miss those days yeah yeah i was thinking this too i was watching that great i feel like it was the last great movie the uh the wet hot american summer troop dudes did that called like they came together where it's just like incredibly cruel and mean about every rom-com cliche I feel like ever since that all the people who star in that now are just like ah you know why are we being mean to rom-com yeah people like I'm gonna have to be in these Hallmark movies at some point says Amy Poehler I guess yeah I feel like it's the

last time Amy Poehler like had like anything with fangs in it, even a little bit. But anyway, having Bart just say out loud, this guy's awful. And Marge agrees. She's like, I know, honey. Please, it'll be over sooner if you don't complain about it. Also, guys, Capital Steps, they put the mock in democracy, by the way, in case you forgot.

They're out of business, too. Oh, man. God damn it. But they say their anymore their web page says they might come back for the presidency of chelsea clinton i'm not making this up that's their promise barf i i i think we might that might not actually happen i think there was a time when i feared the political aspirations of chelsea but she is just so unlikable that they couldn't i don't think they could even hand her a representative no just just show pictures of the wedding and uh we all we can see who's there oh yeah well i guess

though too these deficit rag all these songs they really do show like what the 90s politics were about of just like being worried about boring like this is post-soviet union stuff right man like they just constantly obsessed with the deficit or the trading gap or budget gap or all this shit yeah it's uh i mean for an enemy and clinton and this deficit pearl clutching clinton went straight into that and in his time like he just he picked up the baton from from bush and went straight away with it and he actually did it they balanced the budget and then bush w got in and was like yeah no none no more of that get out of there yeah he said uh reagan proved deficits don't matter oh you actually believe that stuff you

fucking idiot well fortunately no democrat politician would fall for that deficit hawkishness ever again never ever uh and uh so yes we get a list of all the people who are on uh who are the judges for this wilson defarge is a great name for a third party perennial third party candidate he's a real lyndon larouche that's yeah i think that's what they're doing yeah i mean we see uh rowena one one more time she's back for the grade school talent show competition and lisa's pony was that it uh no no for the uh the miss america pageant okay yeah she's though i think they miscolor her in this one because her character in her second appearance and only other on-screen appearance she's african-american in that that's right yeah

they miscolored her as yellow in this one but and that brad fletcher guy he grew up to be mayor pete i think that's who he's actually no br Brad Fletcher has more passion than Mayor Pete has in his entire body. In one finger. Yeah. And also Chilton Gaines. What a great name for a wealthy guy to talk about. I think that so Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, they both grew up in the D.C. area. I think Josh

Weinstein was a page. Oh, really? As like a teenage boy. And he said like Bob Dole was very nice to him the one time they met. I remember that. Yeah he that's what he thought and later though he'd that he wrote a joke where bob dole and bill clinton suffocate in outer space like you could you can never do that i i know it's it's so cliche to say you can never do that joke now but would uh i feel like the simpsons would not do a joke now where both presidential candidates suffocate to death nude in outer space but yeah the as as is pointed out on the commentary the reader's digest does something which no one would do which is let

lisa read a different essay than the one that was submitted like no they've cut her back you didn't get here you got here for the roots of democracy lady what do you think you're doing if you don't want to read that essay then then you're disqualified. Like, the end. Like, yeah. Faith Crowley is going to get fired for letting Lisa give this speech here. But yes, Lisa's new essay is not so crowd-pleasing. Lisa Simpson will now read her essay.

I would like to read a different essay, if I may. Um, okay. The city of Washington was built on a stagnant swamp some 200 years ago, and very little has changed. It stank then, and it stinks now. Only today it is the fetid stench of corruption

that hangs in the air. Ooh, well, yes. And who did I see taking a bribe but the Honorable Bob Arnold? Don't worry, Congressman. I'm sure you can buy all the votes you need with your dirty money. And this will be one nation

under the dollar with liberty and justice for all. Senator, there's a problem at the essay contest. Please, son, I'm very busy. A little girl is losing faith in democracy. Good Lord. And yeah, I took this all as being sincere as a kid. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Probably until I saw this again in my 20s when i got the dvds like oh they were being sarcastic yes this would never ever happen ever in 91 they were saying this would never happen in in i mean in 2021 there wouldn't even be an investigation like it just wouldn't happen it's six years later on lisa the iconoclast she's on stage about to give the truth about jebediah there's a sniper who takes a shot at her yes that's true they they would have killed her right there and reveal the city yeah i mean the the reaction shots from ted kennedy in the audience are also great it's like there's just something about seeing like the giant head ted kennedy drawing he just gives me a chuckle yeah her entire speech of like this i feel like that's just what george

meyer felt or did feel one time in his youth and and then lisa like gets to say i love that on tv lisa gets to say like america stinks like that's just great but this ending is an incredible like work of parody and satire that goes like i would bet if they said oh that lisa is allowed to be disappointed like the that fox would have said no you can't just have lisa be depressed and and think like oh yeah america's a scam like it's all fake it's uh it's all bribery and and and backroom deals she can't think that so the in their attempt to make it good for lisa again and to restore her faith in america they have to go so far in the opposite direction of a thing that would never ever happen that within two hours

he is arrested uh expelled from the senate and and put in jail and finds christ that happens in less than two hours to to chuck colson reference there. Oh, really? Okay. I was reading on the wiki. He famously... He was one of the White House officials who went to prison for Watergate, and he famously became born again there and came out and became an evangelist among political people. So that was the scam he ran then. That's my... You know...

Yeah, well, okay. That's good to know that that's his uh the scam the scam they're making fun of there i it moving so fast uh is is so funny like in the script it doesn't go that fast i think yeah even later we're like no make it so give the time stamps to show that like five minutes pass in between each scene it's it's similar to the end of mr smith because i mean the end of the movie is uh well he's got to give very, he's got a filibuster for a long time. That's not fun to watch. You're cutting between a lot of different things as time passes.

And I say the only reason to watch the movie is to watch the scene towards the end where, so he's got this like army of children back in his hometown because he's like a youth leader or whatever. They're getting out the word about Jeff Smith. They're driving this car down the street. Agents from the political machine that are fighting jeff smith just ram them off the road sharp cut to this woman on the phone children are getting hurt tell him to stop right now so you see just basically the murder of six children on the screen unexpected in a frank capra movie and then i mean that movie does and i this movie is, or this episode, I think, works mostly as a parody. I mean, its relationship to Mr. Smith is a parody of the ending, because the ending of Mr. Smith is he's finally exhausted from his filibuster and collapses and is defeated. But the evil senator who was opposing him was so moved by the content of the speech that he botches a suicide and then

confesses everything to the press yeah that level of just sort of cartoonish denial of reality is what they're going for at the end of the episode here it made me think that in both uh wonderful life and uh mr smith attempted suicide saves the day it's true capper was working through some stuff yeah that's uh i love at that ending bit too the satisfied look on the guy like watching him when he's like after he passes out like he's like rocking back and forth satisfied like that's that's such a great evil guy vision too when i think of like evil smug satisfied people i think of that guy shaking back and forth in his seat uh also the the the guy falls for drilling for oil in mount rushmore like that's such a great just like teddy who like what a great line

uh and yes uh also another great like bit of parody that like oh yeah well this the exchange of hw with uh some uh visiting african dignitaries i want to say it's Desmond Tutu, the recently departed, just based on how he's dressed and his glasses, although it could be anybody, but I think that's what they were going for. I think you're right, yeah. It's just like, you're your bosses.

Tutu was very hot in the early 90s. Apartheid was ending. Actually, yeah, Lisa's, even though it's ending, Lisa still has up her End A apartheid now poster in the uh in the inner bedroom in this episode too but yeah just like yep oh 250 million of them like as a little kid i just took that it's like that's what the president thinks he's that satisfied doing the will of the voters i love america like it the parody completely missed me. And all this happens, I wrote down the times.

Bob Arnold is arrested at 1.19 and at 3.39 p.m. Tron Van Dinn is giving his final speech. That's great. Lisa is then shocked to learn about this. Okay, this should make my bosses very happy. Your bosses? Yep. All 250 million of them.

When my family arrived in this country four months ago, we spoke no English and had no money in our pockets. Today, we own a nationwide chain of wheel balancing centers. Where else but in America, or possibly Canada, could our family find such opportunity? That's why whenever I see the stars and stripes, I'll always be reminded of that wonderful word, flag. There will be a brief recess while the judges tabulate their votes. Lisa, what's gotten into you? Yeah, your other speech was a little more crowd-pleasing.

I'm sorry, Dad. I couldn't think of a nice way to say america stinks extra extra feds nag rotten rad give me one of those imprisoned congressman becomes born again christian i can't believe it the system works lisa shouldn't believe that that's the joke but yeah my favorite joke this time around, like such a subtle joke, is when Tron is saying, whenever I see the stars and stripes, I'll think of that wonderful word, flag. You think he's going to say opportunity

or freedom or, I don't know, plenty or whatever. Whatever American values you want to describe to that. He's like, whenever I'm looking at stars and stripes, I think of flag because I'm looking at a flag. There's like no sentiment behind it. It's just very literal. That is a great line and then also his uh you know common sense leaks through to this like where else but in america

or possibly canada like just he hasn't been like yeah i'd have this opportunity in canada too america's not that special like even even in his fiercely pro-american uh uh essay i mean too i do wonder like when he says they came came to America with no money in their pockets, like, that's quite a quick thing to have within four months a nationwide chain of wheel balancing centers. Like, where did that initial angel investment come from? That's my question on Trong's family. But yeah, like I said, his family was like Arvin, like like South Vietnamese military officers, probably a Golden Triangle heroine.

All that stuff, the stuff that was in that the Denzel Washington American gangster movie that. Yeah, exactly. And again, like I said, I think it's an example to a parody of how a lot of politicians, particularly conservative institutions, brandish Asian Americans like Trong as the model minority used to attack other minorities. Like that's another, like in his opportunity speech is a perfect one they'd give. His speech is called USA A-OK.

Yes, great, great line. Yes, also very quickly, let's hear about that trading gap shuffle. The trading gap shuffle, we're in a heap of trouble to win that trading gap shuffle. The trading gap shuffle. We're in a heap of trouble doing the trading gap shuffle. Yes, sir. I already sing this song. No, that was about the budget gap.

This is the trading gap. That's great. Just like that SNL parody, he doesn't really explain what the term is. Just like, yeah, we're doing it. We're doing the dance. It's happening. It's big trouble i think the rat i get it that in the in the snl one just that he says like i i saw that bob dole was 16 points by bill clinton it made me think of this and he just repeats the thing

he just said thank god uh and i also in the animation the way he like dances back off stage like that's so great, too. More showboating. So, yes, we get a list of all of them. Let's hear the Lisa loses ending. Has happened so many times to poor old Lisa. Will the winning SAB bubble on, oh, melting pot? Lift high your lamp, green lady.

USA, A-OK, or Cesspool on the Potomac. Cesspool, cesspool, cesspool, cesspool, cesspool. And now the winner is USA A-OK by Tron Van Dinn. Miss Crowley, thank you for this oversized novelty check. I would like to share this honor with all of my fellow essayists, particularly the courageous Lisa Simpson, whose inflammatory rhetoric reminded us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Give her the check! She was serious. Say, let me tell you about Lisa, yes. She's that little angel, old McGregor, yes. She caught a crook and really made him pay. She did it all in just one day. That's what I would call being on the ball. Bart!

Lise, you taught me to stand up for what I believe in. And I assume those were all written by Jeff Martin, who was writing every song in the era. I think so. So Mark Russell is knocked unconscious on stage. Like, he doesn't get up. You don't hear him after that thing hits him in the, after the slingshot hits him in the head.

Hey, muckraker-esque is a good invented word. That's not bad. It's almost too clever for him. But yeah, I mean, also like Bubble auto melting pot lift tire lamp free lady like what great titles i love that and and also you know what i'm with homer you know tron is he already set up his family's very rich they don't need that money like lisa that would be life-changing for lisa to lisa everyone needs their wheels balanced yeah it's uh uh there's one last uh big change from the script the biggest change from the script from that guy 3002 is great script analysis twitter thread in the ending this final song

by mark russell not there uh it actually is lisa loses they then cut to them flying home and on the airplane flight back an eagle flies by the window and winks at lisa oh okay i think i like that yeah i i think i know why that was cut too because well i bet it was even just included that you might not know this but matt grating had a lot of like little things that were like the grading rules you can't do this on the show thing and especially after if you remember in war of the simpsons when homer and marge are fighting over the catfish the catfish winks at the camera matt grading hated that more than anything like he hated hated hated it he doesn't like animals doing human things and so this script would have been written right after that reaction from grading i feel like they included it to like troll grading

grading cut it it feels like it was meant to wind him up at a table. Let's see what he'll say if he put this in the script. Certainly a little antagonism with Grady, I think, with that inclusion. I mean, it's much funnier. Give us a third song by the Mark Russell guy. And then kill him. Yes, bring him in the head.

I really love that episode. Just as a parody of Reader's Digest, as a parody of the entire essay, opinion, and columnist-like machinery and every cliche there ever. And it shows you in 31 years since, all those cliches are just reused by every single opinion writer and columnist to this day. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Henry. And, I mean, season three has truly begun the production season three and this is when I've been waiting for this to revisit this season this production

season because it just gets so much sharper and funnier and the characters grow and the animation gets better so I'm very excited to be doing this right now and this is a great way to kick it off Matt any final thoughts on this one is somebody keeping an eye on the trading cap remembered it and I'm thinking we haven't heard about the trading gap

in a while otherwise known as the uh trade deficit somebody better be looking after that because i know i haven't been we're gonna hear like they have to just kind of pan for gold as to what's going you know right in america it's like this has risen by two percent i imagine that will be like one item on a fact sheet oh yeah it'll be it'll be in one of those like list responses of things that like when in in an interview kamala harris is told like hey you're not doing anything and she's like actually we closed the trading gap by four percent last quarter there there was a great thing last year either for memorial day or fourth of

july it's like we're saving you money at the grocery store. And it's like literally a cent off of potato chips this year, or like 10 cents per pound of butter or something like that. So they're really looking for, you know, the silver lining. Yeah, good, good times. Boy, that second Trump term is not going to be fun. No, not looking forward to it. Yeah, it's too bad. But anyway, Matt, thank you so much for coming on again for The Simpsons this week.

Thank you very much for having me. I had a great time. And this goes live on the 23rd, so at this point of March. So you'll be just coming off of your Southern tour. But if you're listening to this on the Patreon tomorrow on the 24th, you guys should be in New Orleans. Yes, God willing. Yes, we can sing the song that got New orleans pissed off of the simpsons there oh oh man that'd be great i i think uh your your new or your perfect new orleans accent i think

will be very appreciated there yeah you know they're gonna love it down there you can try it out i'm gonna get beaten up at all not gonna happen you can try it out in every techie overpriced souvenir store and everybody should follow man uh at kush bomb on twitter a few better follows on twitter out there so but but thank you guys no thank you matt so much we we always love having you on thank you so much for for giving us all your time for for the simpsons of course anything for you guys and for the simpsons so thanks again to matt crispin for being on the show please check out uh chapo trap house's podcast of course and follow him on twitter as kush bomb and as for us the show. Please check out Chapo Trap House's podcast, of course, and follow him on Twitter as Kushbomb.

And as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up there for five bucks a month to get just that, but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that includes all of our limited miniseries episodes we've done to date over 100 episodes. But if you're a $5 and up patron patron you will get monthly episodes of both talking to the hill and talking futurama or king of the hill and futurama podcast every month coming to you throughout the year and there's so much more waiting for you behind that paywall episodes about the critic and mission hill

and so many more other things but also there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for ten bucks a month to get all the five dollar stuff of course but also access to one mega long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob, you're talking about the What? A Cartoon Movie podcast, where me and Bob go through an animated feature film, super in-depth, just like we do The Simpsons. It is once a month, only for our $10 and up subscribers. Last month, we covered South Park, Bigger, Longer, and Uncutut chosen by a large majority of our patrons the month before that we talked about the lion king 2 simba's pride and i bet this month we have another great one coming to you over 200 hours three years worth of what a cartoon movie

is at your disposal at that 10 level in addition to all the five dollar things bob just mentioned if you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can check out all of the great stuff you get for your money so i'm one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast by the way is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm always tweeting up a storm there follow me to keep up to date and when you're on twitter please also follow the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod will keep you up to date on all the things going on in our podcast

whether on the free feed or on patreon and also also, you know what? You should visit TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com because that is where we have an easy-to-view catalog of all of our free podcasts that we put out on both Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. So check that out at TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. That's it for us this week. We'll see you next time for the next episode of our monthly community podcast,

Talk to the Audience. We'll see you next time for the next episode of our monthly community podcast, Talk to the Audience. We will see you then. Homie, put down your magazine for a minute. Huh? I thought you might want to snuggle. That reminds me. Seven ways to spice up your marriage. Marge, you have a nice body.

And if you'd like to see me in a costume, you have only to ask. Thank you, homey.