Fox Almost Sued Itself Over A Controversial Joke On The Simpsons

Television Comedy Shows

One of the central contradictions behind the Fox media empire was pointed out by Lisa Simpson in the 2007 "Simpsons" episode "You Kent Always Say What You Want." She asks, "One thing I've always wondered: how can Fox News be so conservative when the Fox network keeps airing raunchy shows? They don't fit together." 

Replace "raunchy" with "liberal" and you've got the more interesting question. Fox shows like "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" are largely written by people with liberal sensibilities, whereas the Fox News side of the company has always been heavily right-wing, teaching its audience to fear and hate liberals and to never trust any news network outside of its own.

The contradiction works both ways: for the "Simpsons" writers, how do they make peace with helping such a conservative network make money? This is something that "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane has publicly struggled with; he tweeted in 2021 that he wished "Family Guy" didn't have to air on the Fox network. For both "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons," their way of coping with their unavoidable complicity with the worst news network in the world is to make fun of Fox as much as possible and dare the network to do something about it.

The "Simpsons" joke that nearly broke the camel's back was season 14's "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington," where the Simpson family tries to get the lonely Krusty the Clown elected to Congress in order to stop airplanes from flying right over their house. Krusty runs as a Republican, and his campaign is boosted by a debate he takes part in that's hosted by Fox News. Not only is the debate moderator clearly in the tank for Krusty, but there's also a rolling news ticker on the bottom of the screen with nonstop headlines like "Study: 92% of Democrats are Gay," "Oil Slicks Found to Keep Seals Young, Supple," and "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?"

In an interview not long after with the National Public Radio (via Independent), "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening explained, "Fox said they would sue the show. And we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it." He later added, "But now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news."

Fox and The Simpsons have a complicated relationship

Fox News itself denied any such claims of it trying to sue. "We are scratching our heads over here. We liked the cartoon. We thought it was great," claimed Robert Zimmerman, a Fox News spokesman (via The Guardian).

It's hard to believe him though, because as "The Simpsons" has made clear over the years, Fox News can't be trusted. "Did you know that every day Mexican gays sneak into this country and unplug our brain-dead ladies?" Homer says in "You Kent Always Say What You Want" after watching way too much of the network. That episode also ends with Homer telling Lisa he's discovered a horrible truth about the Fox network, only for a Fox announcer to start dubbing over his dialogue.

Whether Fox News actually did try to sue the show, or if it was only making an empty threat in an attempt to dissuade the "Simpsons" writers from any more jabs of this sort, it seems clear that in public Fox's strategy is to act like none of this bothers it. And hey, maybe it really doesn't; the mere fact "The Simpsons" was owned by Fox — well, at least until the Disney acquisition — undermined any sort of bite its Fox jokes might have. You can make fun of Fox News all you want, but at the end of the day if you're taking its money and giving it profits in return, are you really fighting the power?

This is a dilemma that a lot of shows struggle with, like the Amazon-owned "The Boys," which spends most of its time bashing corporations for ruining the world. Fans often point out the irony of a show owned by Jeff Bezos trying to position itself as an anti-corporation series, but then again, what exactly is the show supposed to do about this? If Amazon Studios hadn't picked the show up after over eight years in development hell, the "Boys" TV series likely wouldn't exist at all.

If you're arguing that only TV shows and films that aren't financially connected to evil mega-corporations should be able to critique them, then you're essentially arguing that nearly all critiques of evil mega-corporations should be wiped out of mainstream entertainment. "The Simpsons" and its decades-long ribbing of Fox News would've had a lot more edge to it if it'd been owned by anyone else, sure, but it's still better than not making fun of Fox at all.