In this week's SW Tim Sanders celebrates the Simpsons 500th episode with a neat summation of why the programme is so well loved and influential. As if to labour the point, I picked up on the observation:
It [the Simpsons] pokes fun at the rich and powerful, it undermines faith in authority and the status quo—and yet makes shedloads of cash for its owner Rupert Murdoch. On one level this is a classic case of biting the hand that feeds.
It's clear from this the quid pro quo for biting the hand that feeds is feeding the mouth that bites... well, something like that. The Fox Channel, the fair and balanced Fox Channel that has become a by-word for lunatic demagoguery, may never have got off the ground without the profits flowing from the Simpsons. Radical subversion through popular culture is a utopia, though it can make for great TV.