So much of being Jewish is explaining yourself. There's only about 16 million Jews on Earth, a pittance of the global population, which means that, unless a Jew in the United States stays in the tiniest of bubbles—and, look, it is possible—you at some point invariably end up explaining yourself. Yes, usually it's to well-meaning people who just want to know Why is your new year on a different day? and Why are your holidays always moving around? and How come some of you don't eat pork but some of you do?

And sometimes it's not as simple as that. It's also Why do some of you wear funny hats? and Why do so many Jews work in media? and Why are so many of you rich? and What's up with that George Soros? Even the well-intentioned questions get exhausting after a while, as does smiling through the 10,000th person asking if you had a good Yom Kippur—it's a day of fasting and atonement, it's never good—because being a polite, kind, unthreatening Jew feels like the only defense against people thinking we [checks notes] control all the banks and have western civilization in the sites of our Jewish space lasers.

Is this a uniquely Jewish feeling? No. Of course not. Exhaustion at having to explain yourself or just feeling out of place are not experiences that belong to the Jews any more than the story of Noah and the flood does. But it is nice to not have to explain sometimes, to just feel normal. I think that's what still makes the "Krusty is a Jew" episode so special for me. Nothing is explained. Nothing is given context. Jews are just Jews, nothing we do is clarified or justified—and if you don't get it, well, we've got five more jokes coming, so buckle up and jot it down so you look it up later. And that might be the most Jewish part of it all.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spoken to little kids about The Simpsons. I have, and I highly recommend it. Most of them recounted some version of finding the show during the pandemic.

Their knowledge is encyclopedic: Because every episode is exhaustively listed, all the kids casually threw around official episode titles for which I only had a shorthand when I was growing up. For them, the show is watched on demand in endless quantities. I asked how many episodes they think they’ve seen, and the responses were usually in the 150-to-300 range. And they all intend to watch all 750.

As I’ve humblebragged about often here, I used to run the internet’s largest website devoted to Ralph Wiggum.

Such a dubious notoriety would make you think I’ve already exposed my kids to The Simpsons, right?

Well… no.

After having roughly 30 years to reflect, what I love about the show is how much care you can tell the creators put into each episode.

Nearly every second within a typical 24-minute episode is loaded with sub jokes, perfectly timed to maximize our enjoyment and make a statement.

I really respect the show and what it meant to have as a dorky little middle schooler who felt like it was hard to get people to understand him.

I guess my hesitation with my kid, aside from the fact that she’s sassy enough as it is, is that I’m afraid she won’t get it. A lot of the jokes will fly over her head.

And maybe it’s a “shame on me” moment for not trusting one of the smartest little kids I’ve ever met.

But I guess as I edit this blog post after already posting it, maybe what I’m really afraid of is that she won’t appreciate it as much as I do.

Thankfully, this article came at an optimal point in my life, because now I have 5 examples of recent episodes I will absolutely watch with her starting tomorrow.

It’s a double whammy: I get yet another awesome bonding opportunity with my kid, and I get to face another fear of mine (that being the fear of change in life).

Maybe it’s okay for The Simpsons to not be the same it was when I was a kid. Maybe it’s both worse and better.

Maybe it’s okay for something that’s 36 years old to be different than it was back in elementary, middle, and high school.

There was a lot I learned from The Simpsons, right from the start. Did I learn that people get “MOTHER” tattoos from the first episode? Maybe! How about the Atilla the Hun reference Bart makes in the credits at the end? Did I know who Atilla the Hun was yet? Did I “get” the reference at some point from elsewhere? I don’t know! Eat my shorts!

But there are people that I know are real entirely because of The Simpsons. One person towers over them all, even though he is only 5-foot-3 in real life: Ray Jay Johnson. He’s mentioned in the classic episode “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” When Krusty does, indeed, get kancelled, he says he’s never done a bad show—except for the week Raymond J. Johnson Jr. guest-hosted.

This was everything I could’ve hoped for in a piece about this reference from The Simpsons which I always found obscure.

And I couldn’t agree more with the author’s assessment of learning about the world of pop culture through The Simpsons. Many of the models by which I view the world were sculpted in part through references from that show.

Lest you think I’ve just been watching YouTube all night, here’s a really compelling article about The Simpsons.

This pull quote spoke to me:

“America has certainly turned into Springfield,” says Matt Selman, who is, along with Al Jean, the current showrunner. “I’m gonna generously say: Good people are easily misled. Terrifyingly easily misled. That’s always been in the DNA of the show, but now it’s in the DNA of America. It was a show about American groupthink, and how Americans are tricked—by advertising, by corporations, by religion, by all these other institutions that don’t have the best interests of people at heart.”

I’ve been rewatching clips from the first ten seasons sporadically over the past few months, and I think that’s an astute point that I hadn’t really considered.

The pro wrestling world has a term for fans who know quite a bit about the backstage politics which makes the show possible: a “smart mark” (with “mark” being a carny term for someone who can pull one over on).

But much like internet trolls, the only way you could ever “win” as a pro wrestling fan is by not engaging. By consuming the content, you’re still a mark (even if you are a smart one).

Perhaps the reason so many people are drawn to The Simpsons is similar: you feel like you’re in on the joke, even when you can’t escape the gravitational pull of the society which the show is lampooning.

This video sparked a few thoughts in me:

First, I had never heard of Bartkira or the genre Simpsonswave, but I’m excited to explore those two extensions of the fandom I grew up with.

Second, as someone who built a Ralph Wiggum website as a kid, I can relate to so much of what this YouTuber expresses in his video.

It certainly isn’t my nature to create “art” (in the traditional sense, like painting, drawing, sculpting, etc.). However, I’ve made it a goal to better understand art and the process artists go through to express themselves.

How beautiful is it that our generation has this program, which was intended as a subversive commentary on America in the 1990s, which we can subvert to make own own commentary about America in the 2020s?

Many of my favorite Simpsons episodes of all time, including “Homer at the Bat” and “Bart Gets an Elephant”, were written by John Swartzwelder.

This article is a rare interview with a notoriously reclusive guy, and as someone who was practically raised at the altar of this show, getting a closer look at one of their disciples was a treat.

Speaking with a bit of authority, I'd say this is a pretty good coverage of Ralph's best moments. Although personally, I think they could've replaced anything after season 10 with something a bit more wrigley.

Being the massive Simpsons snob that I am¹, I thoroughly enjoyed this article by Bill Oakley, a writer for the Simpsons during the greatest seasons of the show's existence.

Additional required reading: How We Wrote Classic Simpsons Episodes and The Making Of "Homer At The Bat".