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Amazing Appreciation of Nuance - For A Christian

Lileks goes off the deep end just a bit over a Simpsons gag today:

Simon Crowell [sic] is the admissions director! She scores high. “Meet Maggie Simpson,” he says to another school official. “IQ, 167.”

“One sixty seven!” says the other official. “That’s amazing for a Christian!”

Wha?

Huh?

Rewind. Context? Anyone wearing a cross? Anyone holding a Bible, or daubing red paint on their palms? Did Homer announce he’d seen the Virgin Mary in the grease of a Krusty Burger wrapper? No: totally gratuitous. [...] I’m not surprised that the Simpsons takes a poke at Christianity[...]

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems obvious to me that the guy who's amazed is the one being poked at: the snotty elite type who thinks that he's got the IQ market cornered.

Posted by on January 27, 2005 09:56 AM |

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I gotta disagree with you, Brian. The Simpsons this season has gone pretty hardcore left-wing (and worst of all, unfunnily so). I've only watched it a couple of times this season and both times I've been disappointed by the lack of real satire as opposed to partisan shots.

Posted by: Farmer Joe [TypeKey Profile Page] | January 28, 2005 08:32 AM

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Well, I'm always doing that kind of thing. I never manage to convince many people.

But apparently, in this case anyway, I'm not alone; from today's Bleat:

Some noted that the Simpsons line I discussed yesterday was meant to show the narrow-mindedness of the speaker; perhaps. But it had no context, unless this character regularly says stupid things of this nature, and I missed the episodes where they delineated her attributes in rich & generous detail. In any case, you still couldn’t get away saying that about any other group, except Mormons.

He also mentions the Iraqi elections.

Posted by: bovious [TypeKey Profile Page] | January 28, 2005 11:33 AM

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