Please Stop Comparing Grampa Simpson to Donald Trump. He Doesn’t Deserve It
After Donald Trump’s debate performance last night, which found the former Home Alone 2: Lost in New York star ranting and raving about imaginary problems (some of which involving immigrants in a city literally named “Springfield”), naturally people’s minds drifted to The Simpsons.
Specifically, viewers likened Trump’s geriatric outrage to the famous meme depicting a news clipping of Grampa Simpson yelling at a cloud. This excerpt from a Season 13 episode has become social media’s defining image of impotent elder rage targeting nonexistent threats.
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Longtime Simpsons writer Al Jean even felt compelled to deploy the meme for the very first time, following years of self-restraint, claiming, “I think now is the time.”
Even wilder, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz implicitly compared Trump to the Grampa Simpson meme by telling ABC News that the “angry” and “unhinged” former president reminded him of “an old man yelling at the clouds.”
On the live episode of The Daily Show that immediately followed the debate, host Jon Stewart also made reference to poor old Abe Simpson, speculating that “Trump himself may be becoming one of Springfield’s most famous residents” before cutting to a clip of Grampa complaining that “it’s rotten being old, no one listens to you.”
But all of these comparisons are extremely unfair — to Grampa, that is.
For starters, everyone in the world of The Simpsons owes Grampa Simpson a debt of gratitude because he served his country in World War II, battling Nazis and earning the Iron Cross in the process. Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly defended and enabled white nationalists.
Also, Trump’s administration reportedly “enacted more anti-LGBTQIA+ policies than any previous administration in history.” Conversely, Grampa is far more open-minded. He has a history of exploring his own gender fluidity and was once “the President of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, for some reason.”
Most importantly, Grampa’s penchant for spouting conspiracy theories and half-truths seems to be pretty harmless and not at all racist. He may ramble about wearing onions as a fashion accessory, and tell interminably long anecdotes, but he’s never dehumanized large swaths of the population in order to advance his own insatiable thirst for power.
Even his unspecified beef with that one cloud seemed fairly tame.
While he may have been a bad husband to Homer’s mother, and a stern, emotionally withdrawn father, he definitely mellowed in his old age. He’s just a mild-mannered old man, a valued member of the Springfield Retirement Castle community, who likes to pop pills and watch Matlock.
The only thing Grampa Simpson is really guilty of is stealing Andy Griffith’s medication that one time.
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