Thank Walt Disney for the Most Hilariously Offensive ‘Simpsons’ Scene
Walt Disney may not have been a literal Nazi, but he would have been a stellar juror in the Sideshow Bob trial — “No one who speaks German could be an evil man!”
It’s one of the most enduring urban legends in the history of entertainment: According to the rumors, Walt Disney, or “Uncle Walt” to the gentile children of the world, was a Nazi sympathizer and a virulent anti-Semite who used the power of his world-shaking animation empire to promote bigoted ideologies. However, on the spectrum of American business magnates with proximity to anti-Semitic organizations, Disney seemed to be closer to Elon Musk than to Henry Ford. Disney did invite Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl to tour his Hollywood studio just one day after Kristallnacht and he hired multiple former Nazis to design Disney park landmarks, but his cozy relationship with certain genocidal Germans was, unfortunately, not all that unusual for an American mover and/or shaker during Disney’s time. Hell, half the Nazis Disney hung out with were cashing checks from NASA.
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The Simpsons, on the other hand, has practically no affiliation with Nazi movements past or present, but they do have a soft spot for slandering Disney and his evil corporation, despite the fact that The Mouse now owns Matt Groening’s flagship franchise. Over in the Simpsons subreddit, fans recently discussed which “horribly offensive scene” from the show is their absolute favorite, and the top pick was a classic joke at the expense of their current owner’s old owner.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in 1994 when Disney executives learned that Fox’ biggest comedy hit would spend an entire episode satirizing their company’s theme parks and past history of Nazi-friendliness with the all-time great Simpsons episode “Itchy & Scratchy Land,” from which the show’s best offensive joke originated. I imagine that at least one high-ranking Disney official ended up watching the episode, and I desperately want to know what shade of red their face turned when the voiceover said that the Walt Disney stand-in character Roger Meyers, Sr. “loved and cared about almost all the peoples of the world.”
Though it’s unclear which writer specifically wrote the line, “Nazi supermen are our superiors,” the episode is credited to the most prolific writer in Simpsons history, the incomparable John Swartzwelder, whose Germanic surname does make me wonder whether it was hard for him to write such a scathing portrayal of a possible family friend.
