Legendary ‘Simpsons’ Writer Mike Reiss Roasts Disney in Vicious Wildfire Tweet
As celebrities and entertainment corporations band together to aid the firefighting efforts in Los Angeles, iconic writer, producer and showrunner Mike Reiss wonders if Disney might be willing to buy up another piece of Hollywood in the name of good, for once.
When Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, it also acquired the entire catalog of The Simpsons in the process, a content library that included the famous joke in The Simpsons Movie wherein Bart, rummaging through the luggage of strangers on a transcontinental train, emerges from his plunder wearing a brassiere atop his head in the style of a certain animal’s ears and remarks, “I’m the mascot of an evil corporation!”
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But can a corporation really be all that evil if they use their insatiable urge to suck up more and more companies and properties both physical and intellectual to stop a natural disaster? Presumably, that’s what Reiss means to ask when he name-dropped Disney — his current bosses, as he is still a part-time producer and consultant on The Simpsons — in this inflammatory tweet:
Of course, Reiss was probably just talking about some arcane invention from Disney World with the power to create a fire-stopping vacuum, one developed by the same secretive (and probably expatriated Nazi) scientists running the cryogenics lab where Walt currently slumbers. Certainly, no one on the Simpsons staff would suggest that their new rodent overlords have done anything but nurture the series through its latest seasons and prepare it for its inevitable demis— er, uh, “migration to streaming platforms” with the beginning of Disney+ exclusive Simpsons specials.
No, this is just some creative problem solving from one of comedy’s all-time great creators. And, if Disney did manage to end the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles County with another merger, they would go down in history as one of the city’s most benevolent corporations — and they’d probably get a pass to scrub a few of those “questionable” films from movie history in the process. End the fires, and we’ll stop bringing up Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors.
