Politics

"No Means No/We Know That Now": The Simpsons Mocked P.C./Disney in Last Night's Episode

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Last night's Simpsons' episode, "The Man Who Came to be Dinner" (full ep here) mocked political correctness relentlessly. As America's longest-running cartoon family visit "Dizzneeland," they ride on a version of Pirates of the Carribbean that has been "revamped after massive complaints by two people," explains Lisa.

Here's a quick tour of the ride via screenshots. Go here to watch the full episode; this section starts around 3.10 in.

This is art imitating life, by the way: Back in 1997, Disneyland revised the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride so that buccaneers chased women carrying trays of food, the implication being that the men were hungry, not horny. "On society's scale of offensive vices," reported the Los Angeles Times, "Disneyland apparently has decided that gluttony ranks well below lust."

San Diego State University Gordon Clanton said, "This isn't coming from radical, lesbian feminists. This is coming from Disneyland. It shows—progressively so, I think—that the tendency to rid ourselves of demeaning images and bad role models is becoming far more mainstream than maybe any of us realized."

"No means no, we know that now," sing the pirates…

Who dutifully recycle…

After the ride, the Simpsons go to park restaurant where a rodent-like character tells a bunch of kids, "My cartoons weren't good. They were just first," thus continuing a long tradition of pointing out the obvious about Mickey Mouse and friends.

Watch full episode, which ends up on the home planet of space aliens Kang and Kodos: