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The Simpsons’ Finest Yale-Bashing
The Simpsons’ Harvard-grad writers love nothing more than inserting swipes at Yale into Simpsons episodes. Below, a guide to where you can find the best examples. (Our thanks to Haynes Lee for the online Ivy League reference list.)
January/February 2011
"King-Size Homer”
@ 1:10
At the start of this episode, Monty Burns leads the plant’s staff in calisthenics—wearing a Yale varsity sweater.
"El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer”
@ 3:45
Mr. Burns’s entry in the chili cook-off? “Old Elihu’s Yale-Style Saltpeter Chili.” If you haven’t already heard about the medical effects of saltpeter, you’re not going to learn them here.
"Burns, Baby Burns”
@ 2:20 - trolley from the game
@ 10:00 - Yale admissions
Leaving the Yale-Harvard football game, Burns says he doesn’t know why Harvard bothers—“they barely even won!” Shortly after, in a private train, he declares Harvard can have its football and academics, but Yale “will always be first in gentlemanly club life.” Later comes the scene in which Yale officials tell Burns he'd have to donate an international airport to get his son admitted.
"Future-Drama”
@ 5:45 - Lisa wins scholarship to Yale; McDonald’s owns Yale
@ 13:40 - Burns gives scholarship to Bart
@ 14:35 - Yale has forbidden male-oriented sciences
Probably not in the strategic plan: having been taken over by McDonald's, Yale in future will allow donors to admit applicants like Bart over applicants like Lisa. And it will drop patriarchal science courses for more politically correct courses… like “galgebra” and “femistry.”
“A Star is Torn”
@ 20:15
Words to live by—set to music: “I will go to Yale because I am a legacy!”
“Sideshow Bob Roberts”
@ 21:20
As is confirmed in this episode, Sideshow Bob—a man whose career consists of playing second banana to a clown, and whose signature style includes a grass skirt and a hairdo like a giant red sea anemone—is, yes!, a Yalie.
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