Simps



After a brace of new episodes on cable here I thought the producers of the Simpsons would be hard pushed to top the episode where Homer becomes a superhero vigilante, the Pieman (cue much riffing on the Spider-Man movies among many others). But tonight's episode involving Bart accidentally mooning the Stars and Stripes at a donkey basketball game was sheer genius. It satirised the media hysteria in the US, the right-wing shock-jocks, the villification of anyone who doesn't unquestioningly go along with the status quo, the annihalation of civil liberties to 'defend freedom' , detention without charge and US foreign policy (or lack thereof). In short it was full-on, twelve-bore satire with both barrels aimed right at the head and guarenteed to utterly hack off exactly the sort of people who were satirised...