Rupert Murdoch makes a guest appearance in The Simpsons Season 10
D-Day has arrived for Rupert Murdoch, who has announced he is leaving from his post as head of his media empire. Or should it be D'oh! Day? The news that Murdoch is handing over the reins of News Corp and Fox Corp to his son Lachlan has sparked mixed reactions, with some mourning the departure of the tycoon who remade the media in his image, while others will be glad to see his back.
The «Simpsons» creator Matt Groening will be in the «mixed feelings» camp. An avowed hippie, Groening would see Murdoch as the embodiment of everything he dislikes about capitalism. At the same time, how much fun Groening and The Simpsons had with the mogul who ran the show's parent network, Fox (before its acquisition by Disney in 2017). Murdock was the Simpsons' eternal punching bag — and he seemed to enjoy taking punches as much as the Simpsons gave them.
It's no exaggeration to say that Groening and his show had a genuine love-hate relationship with Murdoch. The Australian media mogul launched Fox in the mid-1980s, intent on breaking the stranglehold on American television of three sleepy legacy networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. Part of that strategy involved taking risks that Fox's half-hearted rivals would never have considered, including launching a satirical cartoon at the dawn of the Nineties about a cream-colored family with four fingers and no thumbs.
Fox's pirate style made his network, created in the image of Murdoch. This culture of risk-taking convinced its executives to bet on «The Simpsons,» which began life as mini-episodes of The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.
Murdoch and Groening were unlikely friends from the start. Groening grew up in liberal Portland and attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, “a hippie college with no grades or prerequisites that appealed to every weirdo in the Northwest.” And yet, although his politics were the opposite of Murdoch's, they had one thing in common: enthusiasm for The Simpsons, Groening told Playboy in 2008. “When I met him, he said he liked the series. He seemed sincere. Yes, he had little dollar signs in his eyes, but he looked like he was a fan.»
Murdoch was more than just a fan. He wanted to be on The Simpsons. He was happy to be ridiculed and entertained by his reputation as an evil billionaire when he appeared in the 1999 episode «Sunday Cruddy Sunday», in which Homer and his gang invade his private box at the Super Bowl. «He played himself on the show, and we wrote the line, 'I'm Rupert Murdoch, the tyrant billionaire, and this is my skybox,' as his opening line,» Groening said. “He accomplished this with great zeal.” In 2010, he had a second cameo when he visited Moe's Tavern and asked to watch The Jay Leno Show (on rival network NBC).
The Simpsons attacked Murdoch and Fox during its more than 30 years on the air. In one episode, Larry King notes that although the Springfield mayoral debate is airing on Fox, there is no need for «the obnoxious hooting and hollering.»
In another, Bart and Homer decide to fake the images and sell them to Fox if they can't get the real footage of the aliens. And when, in a 2000 episode, Bart calls a telethon hotline and promises $10,000 to Rupert Murdoch, the tycoon (played by the voice of Homer Simpson), Dan Castellaneta remarks, «Thank you, you saved my network.» This will be the first time,” Bart replied.
Rupert Murdoch at the presentation of The Simpsons in London, 1996. Photo: AlamyIn fact, when it came to Murdoch and Fox, the fury never stopped. In the 1999 film Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo, Homer boasts that he invested in News Corp, but Lisa reveals that it is an alias for Fox. Homer panics and tries to repair the damage. And when Krusty the Clown runs for president in 2003 and appears in a Fox News Channel debate, there's a lot of fun with the network's right-wing views. When a Democratic politician appears on screen, he is given devil horns and flanked by a communist flag.
Four years later, after Simpsons reporter Kent Brockman is fired for using profanity on air and moves in with Homer and his family, Homer takes the opportunity to rattle off a list of Fox News-style conspiracy theories, with Marge outright noting that he's watching «Fox». It was also not surprising to learn that Mr. Burns—the Simpsons' parody of predatory Gilded Age capitalism—was a Murdoch fan, noting in 2011 that “you can't control all the media, unless you Rupert Murdoch.»
But if there's a lot of love in the Simpsons' relationship with Murdoch and his media interests, there's also a little hate. In 2003, Fox News threatened to sue Fox and The Simpsons after a cartoon showed a thinly veiled version of the channel mocking its hysterical tone with a news reel captioned «Study: 92 Percent of Democrats Are Gay.»
“Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think that Rupert Murdoch would pay Fox to sue himself,” Groening recalls. “We got away with it.”
The Simpsons also got into trouble with nasty Fox host Bill O'Reilly. In 2010, a cartoon featured a Fox News helicopter with the slogan «Fox News: Not racist, but #1 with racists.» The plane then begins to fall — an opportunity to ridicule Fox's «Fair and Balanced» slogan when the pilot declares, «We're unbalanced! This is unfair!”
This drew the ire of O'Reilly, who tweeted: «Continuing to bite the hand that feeds it, Fox Broadcasting is once again letting their cartoon characters run wild…Pinheads? I think so.» However, Groening will have the last laugh: O'Reilly left Fox in 2017 after the New York Times reported that Fox News had settled five lawsuits by women accusing the host of misconduct.
Like all rich leftists, Groening can be accused of hypocrisy. The success of The Simpsons has earned him a fortune of $600 million, most of which comes from Murdoch's coffers. He also had no shame in participating in the capitalist ritual of squeezing a popular franchise for all it's worth: Groening licensed the Simpsons' image for everything from T-shirts to T-shirts. He became incredibly rich participating in the very system that he hated as a student.
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening in 2022 Photo: Getty
Still, he has at least been consistent in his disdain for Fox News. And he's always been an equal opportunity offender: The Simpsons made fun of Donald Trump, but it also took a swipe at Bill Clinton, while John F. Kennedy clearly inspired the corrupt Mayor Quimby, right down to his posh New England accent. However, he openly states that he finds Fox News offensive on many levels.
“Fox News gives me headaches, not so much because of the political content, but because of the spinning logos, American flags and music designed to scare the hell out of you. Who needs it? In the show, we make fun of Fox News,” he told Playboy. “The most fun we had was putting a news feed like theirs at the bottom of the screen. It said things like «Rupert Murdoch: amazing dancer», «Brad Pitt plus Albert Einstein equals Dick Cheney» and «The Bible says Jesus advocated cutting capital gains.»
Fox News may not have filed a lawsuit (and later denied ever threatening Groening). However, it was clear in the Simpsons writers' room that while they had fun, it was time for a new goal.
“We were told not to do it again. Fox said it would confuse viewers. I don't see how you could think that this is real news from a cartoon series, but we'll see. It's fun any time you can piss off a right-wing crazy person, but it's also fun to piss off a left-wing crazy person. In fact, everyone on the show tries not to be preachy or bossy. We're trying to mix it up.”
He did it. The Simpsons' picture of Murdoch portrays a tyrannical billionaire who strikes fear into the hearts of his underlings, but also has a sense of humor and Australian pugnacity. Murdoch seemed to find the image pleasing. He will no doubt long for the many benefits of power when he relinquishes control of his empire. But he may, in particular, miss his status as the comedic villain The Simpsons loved to hate.
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