- Culture
- 08 Nov 16
For over 27 years The Simpsons has been dealing out some of the sharpest wit and deftest satire in almost every facet of life. Here's everything that they've taught us about the American electoral system and the candidates running!
Just over 20 years ago, The Simpsons held the two-party election system up to ridicule with their 'Treehouse of Horror VII' episode, one of their highest rated episodes ever.
In the clip, aliens Kodos and Kang kidnap and impersonate 1996’s Presidential candidates Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. They were exposed by Homer, but as you can see, it didn’t do any good.
The pair exploited the two party system and Kang was elected President. When one person in the crowd defiantly shouts, "Well I believe I'll vote for a third party!" Kang replies - "Go ahead and throw your vote away".
Twenty years later, America is faced with a prospect only slightly better than aliens hungry to enslave humanity. They've got Trump and Hillary (and a couple of third party candidates without a hope in hell of winning). Few people are satisfied yet most voters will begrudgingly decide on one or the other. And who do you blame if your choice of horrible candidate doesn't win and things go belly-up? Ask Homer:
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Four years after this episode, The Simpsons pulled things out of the bag once again and flat-out predicted Trump's advancement into the political arena.
The now-infamous "Bart to the Future" episode of The Simpsons, which aired 16 years ago, on March 19, 2000, predicted a Donald Trump presidency. And the outlook was not bright.
From about 2.20 minutes into the video, you'll see President Lisa Simpson inherit a financially broke USA after succeeding a certain President Trump.
Simpsons writer Dan Greaney recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the line was "a warning to America."
"What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her," he said. The whole thing started off as a joke but has now become a bad situation of life imitating comedy.
The "debateful eight" aired back in February and imagined the Republican and Democrat candidates fighting (literally) to come out on top.
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Then finally, back during the summer, The Simpsons went with an all-out spoof of Trump in an episode from their 27th season, decidedly throwing their weight behind Hillary.
Last month, the cartoon comedy had just enough time for one more election clip before election day. Here's an Homer vying with an All-American Trump-supporting Putin puppet.
Take a look at a few more stills from The Simpsons which sum up the election fever.
Here's something from 2012's somewhat quieter election:
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Switch 'Bart' with 'Trump' and 'anarchy' with 'a wall' and you'll get the picture.
"Goldman Sachs says, HELLO!"