I think it was :homer-bye:
You could alternately see it as an Elon Musk-type figure selling the town of Springfield a gadgetbahn when they could have solved their problem with a regular bus or train for half the price and double the reliability.
...but the average viewer probably interpreted it as being anti public transit.
Springfield does have a school bus, I think. idk where that fits into the bus/train thing, we don't have them where we live (but we have a lot of regular buses and a C+ train network)
Also there have been a shitload of crappy American monorail projects.
:wtyp-gang: or maybe just donoteat01 did a video on the general phenomenon of American transit authorities preferring flashy new garbage to known, workable solutions, and monorails tend to fit the bill because they're pointlessly slow, have short routes, and fail to use rail standards - but they're cool hotness
The part of Nimoy was originally written to be George Takei. Takei wouldn't do it because he considered it anti public transit; Takei was also doing commercials for the Milwaukee bus system at the time.
Conan didn't consider it anti public transit and isn't anti public transit himself, but he's a massive End of History lib, so ideology played a role in public transit being the punching bag.
Monorails only make sense if your town has the geography to make it plausible… and even then cable cars still exist
Big time. The Simpsons always had a reactionary streak, kind of par for the course for a show that grew up in the shadow of Reaganism.
Edit: that said it was also strangely sympathetic to the USSR and the Eastern Bloc in the early seasons? Go figure.
It's not so much that there are reactionary episodes, more that a lot of the humor and commentary is reactionary. Like when they have Abe say he doesn't want or need social security, but he'll raise hell if "they" miss one payment. Or that bit about driving an electric car making The Gays think you're A Gay too. Or when Willie says "talk to my union" when Skinner asks if he can clean the windows both well and quickly. Etc, etc.
In terms of full plotlines, that one about Marge giving up weightlifting because it's making her too "manly" and emasculating Homer comes to mind. Then there's two where Homer is divinely punished for choosing to ignore religion. Hell, the villain of the movie is an EPA agent.
There's also one where all the U.S. senators spring into action to punish one of their own for taking a bribe, just to restore Lisa's faith in the legal system. I don't know if that counts as reactionary? But it's definitely American Exceptionalism.
Okay, I see. But I think you’re misinterpreting a couple of those.
For the “ bit about driving an electric car making The Gays think you’re A Gay too”. The joke is the ride they’re on is sponsored by gasoline companies, who are trying to make electric cars look as bad as possible. So the bit is actually satirizing pro-fossil fuel propaganda. Link to video. I remember seeing that at the time it came out, though, and not picking up on the joke and thought they were just calling electric cars gay too, but I just wasn’t picking up on the subtleties of the joke.
Then as for restoring Lisa’s faith in America, that’s from Mr.Lisa Goes to Washington. I love that episode. It accurately depicts how corrupt American politics is, and Lisa’s speech of Washington being a ceasepool is far and away the post accurate criticism of the system I’ve seen on network television. The part you’re describing is this super exaggerated, idealized way the corruption is resolved in the episode. Almost like a depiction of how the writers wished the system worked. The awareness of the complete unrealism of it, though, is revealed by lines like the guy at the contest calling his Senator who doesn’t have time for the call but drops everything and immediately focuses on the issue when the guy calling (super over dramatically) says “But sir! A little girl has lost faith in democracy!!!”. Then there’s the part where then president George H W Bush says something like, “we’ll I don’t know if my bosses are gonna be happy about this”, to which someone asks “you have bosses?”, to which Bush responds “You betcha,all 300 million of them!”
It’s an incredibly outlandish series of events and the joke (as I see it) is how unlike reality it is. It’s playing out our school grade conceptions of how the political system works and in turn illustrates how ridiculous they are.
And about it being American exceptionalism, I don’t know about that. It’s more like a depiction of the system working squeaky cleanly without corruption. I think that can hardly be described as reactionary. It’s almost sad in how it’s pining for a system that works.
I would say the first 10 seasons are filled with good takes (I mean, Homer leads strikes/unions like 2 or 3 times at the power plant lol). But I have no doubt that later episodes are stupid and reactionary. I’m not familiar with the other examples you listed, but they sound dumb as hell.
It was a reference to the one in Seattle https://twitter.com/ConanOBrien/status/943982083726229504
It was making a point about paying private companies to do public works, which is a form of privatization. Public transit is the subject because an out-of-control monorail is way more exciting than, idk, a Carona virus pandemic but it could have been education or healthcare or anything else and still made the same point
Pubic transportation has to dig or build into the sky but never take the road that cars use. Sad.
