The Simpsons has betrayed the virtues that made it once a very great show, and for this reason it should be cancelled. The virtues of which I am referring to are not just artistic. They are also, and more importantly, civic virtues as well.

During the first eight seasons of the series' run, The Simpsons was not only the best show on television, it was the best show in the history of television. The combination of great voice acting, sympathetic characters, and smart, hilarious, and often quite moving writing brought both the family sitcom and the TV cartoon to a still unequalled apogee.

The cultural and comedic achievements of The Simpsons in their heyday will never be effaced by time, but the show's slow, seemingly unending decline - which brings to mind the heat death of the universe in terms of its inexorable but agonizingly protracted fizzling-out - has been very sad for all of those who have been fans of the show from the beginning. But now, after the episode of Sunday, April 8th, 2018, "No Good Read Goes Unpunished," it's not just sad, and more than a bit embarrassing. It's now infuriating. 

Even in its era of unassailable glory, the show was not free from many of the social problems of its time, and these were often regarded as not being real problems at all by those who were unaffected by them. The character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon was, and still is, a stereotype, and the documentary filmmaker Hari Kondabolu was quite correct in saying that the way in which Apu is depicted in The Simpsons, as awkward and often devious, is extremely problematic and ought to be frankly addressed.

The Simpsons' response to this controversy was horrendous. It characterized the problem as a merely annoying attempt to force art into a procrustean bed of political correctness. The episode suggested, through a painfully unfunny parody of "progressive" storytelling, that when an artist tries to rethink how to tell stories in ways that are more inclusive and less prone to stereotyping, then the results would be perforce toothless and of no artistic merit.

This not only straw man's Kondabolu's argument (he was in no way saying that The Simpsons should only characterize the denizens of Springfield in a way which should give no offense to progressives), but it presents an insultingly blatant either/or fallacy. The fallacy being: We can either continue perpetuating the same problems which we ignored back in the 1990s, or we can rob the show of all of its bite by rendering its characters as entirely anodyne. This is a fallacy because it assumes that these are the only options available to us, and this manifestly untrue.

This mischaracterization, and this handwringing plea to keep things as they are, is indicative to me of real artistic stagnation, not of artistic integrity. The unfunny, politically correct "progressive" parody is not the inevitable future of any artist who seeks to move beyond the problems which characterized our standards for writing in the past, no more than it was for Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and others when they sought to portray black Americans as living, real, multi-dimensional human beings in an era in which much of White America was still quite comfortable with antebellum stock stereotypes. Really, all it takes is some thought and effort, but thought and effort is precisely what The Simpsons has lacked for more than fifteen years now. (Very sadly, the show has become the kind of shallow but still self-congratulatory program that it would have parodied during the classic seasons.)

And to say, as some have, that a staunch adherence to stereotypes like Apu is simply carrying on the tradition of "equal-opportunity stereotyping" (an oxymoronic term if there ever was one) fail to see that this tradition - even in a show as brilliant as The Simpsons once was - should not make it immune to criticism, nor does the fact that it is a "tradition" in any way argue for why we should continue to accept it. We should not. We never should. We shouldn't have then. We shouldn't now.

Finally, perhaps the most insulting element of The Simpsons' failure to even face up to the problem, is the fact that it's Lisa Simpson who delivers the lines that reduces the problem to an issue of political correctness, and then throws her hands up as if they are left without any recourse except to kill all that was lively, funny, and dramatic in the show. This is the same Lisa Simpson, as Hamish Ridley Steele pointed out, who protested the sexist stereotypes embodied in her talking Malibu Stacy doll, and then boldly went on to try to create a dynamic new role model for young women. It wasn't lost on us why this role model was going to be largely based on Lisa herself, and even bear her name: Lisa Lionheart.

There wasn't anything that was "Mary Sue" about Lisa. She was talented and smart, but she was also keenly aware that she couldn't get anywhere without effort and without facing her own emotional hang-ups. But what made us all root for Lisa was that she would root for us, too. She would lend support for anyone who was disenfranchised, manipulated, or abused. She was the one who took being a beauty queen, traditionally a token of the patriarchy and tool of corporate interest, and turned it into a bully pulpit. If you want to talk about taking a character from decades ago and taking it into a radically different direction, Lisa Simpson should be first one that comes to mind, but it has not been a change for the better.

I had said that the reasons why we should cancel The Simpsons are not just because its artistic but also its civic virtues have been betrayed. This is embodied in the transformation of Lisa, who was so inspiring for all of us to do something to make things better for other people - Lisa, who made us believe that we can reach people and change their outlook on things; Lisa, who made us believe that we can make a difference, but only if we ourselves develop a lion's heart to do so - into the kind of character who would dismiss the idea of frankly addressing the legacy of stereotypes, and suggesting that we just can't deal with effectively.

The Lisa of the past would never have dismissed this issue as just the rantings of a p.c. thug, and would never have given up so easily. But the show has given up, and this betrays the civic virtues that the show once embodied: that wherever you are, even Springfield could be better and you could be the power to help make it better.

Such a betrayal is far, far, far graver than simply being unfunny, and it would be better if the show just came to an end rather than give it the chance to continue to spread the very opposite sort of values that made it the masterpiece of comedy and heart that it was so many years ago now.