The Simpsons have been irreverently relevant for four decades, especially with their willingness to mock popular cultural with an alarming density of jokes per minute of broadcast or (jpmb), a desperately needed element in the wake of the latest Superbowl massacre downplaying the presidency which only included a billion camera shots of Taylor Swift, down from the usual trillion.
While no one in the world was spared being ridiculed by the legendary writing team of the show regardless of race, politics, sexual orientation or sport, the innovative humor was timely. In a particular episode encapsulating the Super Bowl experience Dolly Parton cast as a memorable cameo was transcendent, her Snoopy head costume a double entendre mocking NASA while celebrating the simplistic brilliance of Charles M. Schulz and his troupe of children encountering the confusing world of adulthood.
A story within a story within a story, the Matryoshkas figurines layering of a plot indicative of just how great the writing was for the cartoon at its apex of creativity and sheer humor. The plot involved Ms. Parton liberating Homer and his legion of hooligans from Super Bowl jail, an ironic gag making light the old Philadelphia football stadium, Franklin Field which had a miniature courtroom processing intoxicated fans, the animated Simpsons bit included a rocket pack and incendiary mascara. The 2025 attempted game and experience in stark reality was not as fun, as “wokeness” obstructed entertainment, and Swift was vociferously booed by Chiefs fans for her loyalty to Philly, despite her romantic attachment to Travis Kelce.
Calibrated by the will of the gods, cultural seismographs measured the impact of Superbowl Sunday on citizens in the wake of the historic election, the influence of popular culture and the brute force of consumerism met with the force of an intentional blizzard boosting viewership ratings in the process of a perpetual storm. And there was the halftime show.
This was controlled chaos. The halftime debacle of a concert disturbingly vacuous with hints of brain cell killing mesmerizing indoctrination, which apparently featured an appearance by tennis legend Sarena Williams roaming around aimlessly on the temporary stage like a wayward temptress. The Left has gone insane, at least within the confines of the most watched television broadcast on the planet.
If the halftime show and a not so cryptic tribute and sendoff to Biden and Harris was not enough, the result of Philadelphia dismantling Kansas City 40-22 and burning into the collective retina, the intensity of the Winter arctic storm hammering the nation only exacerbated the environment of a game experience quantified by toxic cultural divisiveness. This unsettling phenomenon presented a chilling dichotomy to comfort, nachos, beer, and the comradery of a living room with high-definition televisions blaring. The brutalities of the pretended gridiron strife along with the marketing force of the free market was dominated by the fusion of artificial intelligence with advertising and the first Portland and Seattle grade passive aggressive protests to Trump.
While the Taylor Swift factor is passe, husbands, wives and girlfriends and the Dennis Rodmans of the world inquire as to the software iterations of love, an intrigue as fleeting and real as late Summer Daisies adorning an ornately evocative parched landscape. For a fleeting moment in the flickering timescape of the Information Age as Patrick Mahomes was sacked for the first time, football was back and the savage carnage of the struggle between the twenty-yard lines, the chasms between generations were defined, if not beckoned by the dream of athletic prowess and the gravity of leisurely groupthink through the dizzying jump cuts of commercials conducted like a symphony through AI.
Ms. Parton’s performance within the confines of the Simpson’s television script was entertaining and lovably zany, unlike the bizarre chaos of a staged mass bridging the first and second half of the blowout of a forgettable Superbowl that identified as plausibly palatable to the pervading hive mind, a metaphor for the dying convulsions of the countercultural movement facing the wrath of the Trump administration. As competition yields to the ecosystem of participation trophies, things will continue to get disturbingly weird in the absence of consequence and the abundance of entitlement.