If you head on over to Twitter and scroll through #BestMuseumBums, you’ll see museums around the world competing, cheekily, for having the best butt in their collection.

Here’s the best bum in the Waltonen collection. It belongs to Princess Cashmire.

It seems like every week, a flurry of articles comes out about something The Simpsons has predicted.

I’ve written about this several times, most recently in this blog.

Right now, fake news is going around about The Simpsons predicting the murder of George Floyd.

They didn’t.

The images that are being used to argue it don’t come from the show–someone has altered them.

One picture was created intentionally as a form of social protest.

I am terribly irritated at “news” sources, though, that repeat the debunked rumors.

Take this article, for example, from something called Lastly.com.

It looks vaguely like a news source, enough to fool some people. I couldn’t find an “about us,” etc.

After repeating the rumor, the article showed the pictures used to further it.

At the end, the author clarified his/her ignorance: “it was not immediately clear as to which episode from The Simpsons aired the White House lights off. Or if at all, the pics belong from [sic] the cartoon series.”

The passive voice is deceptive.

It actually is clear–to anyone who either knows the show or who does the most basic research of asking someone who knows the show.

If “news” sites like this did any kind of fact checking, this rumor would not have spread so far. Snopes actually had to address it.

(In case you don’t trust me, trust Snopes. The rumor’s false.)

This week, my Simpsons class and I are doing our unit on sex and sexuality, using my chapter in my and Du’s new book, The Simpsons’ Beloved Springfield.

One of the episodes I like to use is 2005’s “There’s Something About Marrying.”

The same-sex marriage debate comes to Springfield, dividing, briefly the Simpsons’ household, as Marge lobbies Reverend Lovejoy to be more accepting, and Homer protests legalization. (When Homer realizes he can profit from officiating gay weddings, he changes his position.)

Patty soon announces she’s marrying a professional female golfer. Marge has been in denial about her sister’s sexuality, which is moderately understandable, since Patty almost married Seymour Skinner once. Marge’s liberal positions don’t hold true when she’s asked to accept her sister.

Marge comes around, of course–she does love her sister.

But Patty doesn’t get married. Marge has discovered that the other bride-to-be is actually a groom. He is posing as a female not because it aligns with his gender, but to be a female golfer. He and Patty hadn’t yet had sex, and he wasn’t going to tell Patty until after the wedding.

When he asks Patty to accept him as a man, she declines: “Hell, no! I like girls!”

The last time I taught this episode, two years ago, some of the students’ responses surprised me.

Many of them conflated the golfer’s fraud with being transgender, even though the show clearly indicates that’s not the case. And some argued that Patty should have married him, that if she loved the person, she shouldn’t care what kind of body he was in.

While I could understand this came from a good place, a place of more fluid gender boundaries, I had to push back.

He lied to her, after all. And he planned to lie to her until after they were legally bound together. “What was going to happen,” I asked, “on their wedding night when she learned she’d been deceived in such a way?”

Lying aside, I also tried to explain that Patty might just not be sexually attracted to men. And that we shouldn’t judge her for not also liking men.

In twenty years of teaching this show, I’ve gone from pushing against students’ homophobia against John in “Homer’s Phobia” to insisting that Patty’s lesbianism doesn’t have to turn into full-on pansexuality.

Who would have thought, all those years ago, that a lesbian character would come off as too sexually conservative? And what will push my students’ children’s buttons in the years to come?

This week, my Simpsons class is tackling politics. Last night, the boy and I sat down to rewatch “Much Apu About Nothing.” While other political episodes rotate on and off the syllabus, “Much Apu” is always there, for the way it captures corruption, mob mentality, red herring issues, and more.

Since the episode starts with a bear, the boy said it was perfect for this week (there’s a lost baby bear in Davis, causing a stir).

But the more we kept watching, the more we realized this episode fits amazingly well with the current covid zeitgeist.

Right after being advised to stay in his home, Homer breaks quarantine.

The next thing you know, there’s an angry mob marching to their city hall in protest.

When confronted with a problem, the town turns immediately to xenophobia.

Rather than follow any logical advice, the townspeople rely on weird fixes for their problems, using specious reasoning.

At least they’re not injecting themselves with bleach.

On this day in 1987, I saw the first Simpsons short.

Isn’t it miraculous that it led to so much?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F988JDDuFsQ

This week, I had the honor of appearing on Davisville again. We got to talk about one of my favorite things–The Simpsons!

Denise and I had the opportunity to be interviewed for a great podcast.

You can listen here.

30 years ago today, I had the VCR all ready to go.

I had to record the very first episode of The Simpsons.

Today, I landed in Greece. Tomorrow, I will give a paper on Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, based on The Simpsons.

Our interview on The Best Darn Diddly Podcast went on so long that they divided it into two!

You can listen to both parts here.

We had a great time, so we want to share it with you, dear reader.