Bart, Lisa, Marge, Homer, and…

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Simpsons celebrated its 20th anniversary on network television last night, with an hour-long special The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special: In 3D! On Ice”, directed by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Super Size Me. It was an exploration of how The Simpsons has affected pop culture, along with the usual celebrity appearances, including a cameo by…Mother Jones magazine.

Back in 1989, Mother Jones art director Kerry Tremain was smart enough to realize that Matt Groening (rhymes with “complaining”) was going to be able to make the jump from his dark, smart, comics which explored how love, work, school, and childhood are hell, to the medium of network television. Groening’s Simpsons animations had appeared on the Tracy Ullman Show for two seasons, but whether the series would appeal to the larger network television audience was still up for grabs. Mother Jones ran a cover story about Groening’s work, which included an image drawn by Groening of Bart and Bongo (the worried child from the “Hell” series) on the cover.

The cover previewed The Simpsons‘ tactic of entertaining while satirizing; it presented Bart and Bongo as approachable, lovable celebrities tweaking the jargon of revolution (Bart: “Kids in TV land—you’re being duped!”) with a punch line that undercut it (Bongo: “We Are?”)

A year and a half later, on the May/June 1991 cover, Tremain again used Groening artwork, this time to illustrate the cover story, “America’s Dirty Little Secret: We Hate Kids”. It worked similarly to the ’89 cover: Lisa Simpson exhorts the reader to “Free the Oppressed Children!”, adding, “Except my brother.” Bart is visible but silent; Lisa has her foot over his mouth.

Several months ago, the production company that’s putting the special together contacted us, asking for permission to use the ’91 cover in the show. We told them about the ’89 cover, and enthusiastically gave them permission to use both. Last night I gleefully watched a media montage of the Simpsons on the cover of Time, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Mother Jones.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate