If you watched “The Simpsons” this weekend – and I don’t know how many Americans still do – you might have seen the show take on women in politics. The classic Simpson’s satire might have been amusing except for the gratuitously savage way they treated Kellyanne Conway.
In the episode, the matriarch of the nuclear family Marge runs for and becomes the first female mayor of the town. I’ll spare you the details of the episode (which you can read here).
However, the show takes a needless and despicable swipe at real-life presidential campaign manager and now presidential advisor, Kellyanne Conway. They compare her to Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Here’s what they did as reported by The Hill:
During Sunday's show, Marge Simpson is elected the first female mayor of Springfield and her team is finding ways for her to boost her popularity when a political adviser decides to use her husband Homer to improve her image.
“I’ll be the Kellyanne Conway of this thing!” the adviser says.
“Kellyanne Conway!” a woman in a focus group says. “I like how she always looks like she just woke up.”
“I think it’s inspiring how now a woman can be Joseph Goebbels,” another woman replies.
The entire focus groups nods their heads in agreement with the statement.
The joke isn’t funny.
Writers of the Simpsons are being sexist by making fun of Conway’s look. When did it become okay to pan the looks of a high-profile woman in politics? Isn’t that what Hillary Clinton always railed about?
This joke isn’t new.
In February of this year, Saturday Night Live had a terrible sketch that painted Conway as the psychotic Glenn Close character in the movie “Fatal Attraction.” It was panned by most as going too far and even reporters like NBC’s Andrea Mitchell agreed that the sketch was “not right.”
The meat of the joke is beyond inappropriate.
The show calls her a racist, Anti-Semitic Nazi leader. Perhaps they think it’s clever to compare the two, but their analogy is misplaced. Conway is neither the White House communications director nor spokesperson. Furthermore, I haven’t seen an entire ethnic group rounded up and exterminated at the request of the leader of this nation, have you? Furthermore, Goebbels poisoned his six children before committing suicide in the last moments of the war. Are they predicting that Kellyanne Conway would do such a heinous act?
Kellyanne Conway is a mother and wife. When you put this joke in these terms, we see just how despicable it is.
Finally, the show suggests that any women who like Kellyanne Conway view her through a twisted lens. These writers can’t fathom how any woman in America could appreciate and look up to a smart woman, who took the reign of a presidential campaign and led that candidate to victory – breaking a glass ceiling.
Like many others in Hollywood, the partisanship of “The Simpsons” is on full display.
The progressive takeover of pop culture and media from beauty pageants to SNL is not new. How Americans are responding to it is new though. Americans are tuning out or speaking out via social media. They are also boycotting and taking dollars elsewhere. Another weekend of near empty stadiums for NFL games is an example.
Debate about policy or philosophical differences is welcome in America. Politics offers a rich source of material and content for comedy, music, television, and movies.
But, the left in Hollywood has overplayed their hands and been particularly pernicious against female conservatives, Republicans, and those in the Trump Administration. Americans are taking note and no longer giving this attitude an audience.