I’m a bit bleary-eyed today as I did not get much sleep last night.
The January workload in my office seems to have increased exponentially. The volume of correspondence to be answered is significantly higher since the inclusion of calls from the City’s 3-1-1 Call Center. Usually, the winter is a slow season – not anymore!
I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been reading "Planet Simpson." It’s a detailed look at how the TV show "The Simpsons" has defined our generation. Some generations had their literature, others had their rock and folk music, we have "The Simpsons." What’s so great about the show is that it subverts our culture, pointing out what really is compared to what others would have us think is what ought to be. I want to quote one particular excerpt that I found telling about the Homer Simpson character and how it represents modern-day America. It refers to the episode where Homer learns that his stupidity is due to a crayon being stuck in his brain. Upon removal of the crayon, he becomes vastly intelligent but his intelligence only brings him disappointment – to the extent that he chooses to return to his old, ignorant, blissful self.
"There are two nasty truths buried in Episode BABF22. The first is that Homer’s life is so successful because he’s so dumb. Anyone with too much smarts, too great a sense of responsibility, too great a propensity for asking difficult questions will be hopelessly frustrated by modern American life. A similar argument lies at the heart of the hit film ‘Forrest Gump’ in which Tom Hanks’s mentally challenged Forrest becomes a national hero, while his childhood friend Jenny asks the tough questions and finds only depravity, addiction and fatal disease as her reward. And this point would be hammered home even more dramatically a few years later, with the rise of a smirking frat boy, failed oilman, bumbling baseball team owner, wannabe baseball commissioner and absolutely anti-introspective non-thinker named George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States.
"The other argument implicit in Homer’s decision to return to stupidity is more subtle but ultimately far more damning. The key detail here is this : Homer’s choice is portrayed as perfectly rational. Obvious even. Why, after all, would anyone choose a lifetime of bitter disappointment and inner turmoil when successfully contented bliss is only a brain hemmorhage away? The America of Episode BABF22 not only encourages and rewards stupidity, it treats it as the preferable mental state. There is no progressive, enlightened society just around the corner in which probing intelligence will be the desired norm. Homer is the desired norm. He is the Everyman. The hero. Agree with Lisa’s social critiques all you want but admit it – Homer is the one you love."
