Editor’s Choice
The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved; Faber and Faber, 333 pages ($27).
No, not “M*A*S*H.” Or “I Love Lucy.” Or “Cheers,” either. The answer to the question “What is the longest-running comedy series in American television history?” is “The Simpsons,” which began 21 years ago and, more than anything else, demonstrated that the “alternative” branch of American humor was no longer the slightest bit “alternative” but, in fact, the mainstream. It wasn’t just “ready for prime time,” it was ready for the fanatic allegiance of a whole new class of Americans— all those literati, technorati and popculturati spawned in a post-Silicon Valley world.
Thomas Pynchon has been on it, for pity’s sake. Tom Wolfe was on it —getting mustard all over his white suit without even knowing he’d be on. Poet Robert Pinsky—poet laureate from 1997 to 2000—was not only on it but pronounces the show “an effectively funny, anti-b. s. device. . . I do think of those writers and actors and directors as admirable, non-b. s. practitioners of civilization.”
On the Fox network no less, whose all-powerful majordomo and rightwing monolith Rupert Murdoch says on Page 123 of this book “in the first few years, some old-fashioned people thought it was undermining family values and it was terrible and such. I think that’s nonsense.”
This oral history of the cultural phenomenon begins with creator Matt Groening, quoted in pseudo-maniacal song on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2003, and ends 290 pages later with writer/producer Jay Kogen telling us about a study that said the No. 1 reason people liked the show was “all the pretty colors” and how much it pleased them “when Homer hit his head.”
D’oh.
—Jeff Simon
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