"The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed"

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

J-Tribe Overreach in action... The CSR

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"The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed"

 is the Sixteenth episode of The Simpson's 21st season.

It aired on March 28, 2010.

Plot

The story opens with Flanders officiating a Bible -study group in his home. However, he's continually interrupted by the antics of Homer next door, who is playing on a "slip-n-slide"-style water slide toy. In the end, Flanders gets exasperated and claims that Homer is the one and only man who is irredemable. Reverend Lovejoy, trying to salvage the situation, encourages Ned to reach out to Homer. Ned, acquiescing, invites Homer and the Simpsons to come along with the Bible group's tour of the Holy Land. Marge accepts over Homer's objections, even offering to pay for the trip themselves.

The group lands in Jerusal em, where they are met by Jacob, an eccentric Israeli tour guide and his niece Dorit, who later is revealed to be security. Jacob, after an argument with Marge, is ready to commence the tour, and Ned is eager to walk the Via Dolorossa (or Way of the Cross) as the first stop on the journey. Instead, after Homer's urging, the first stop ends up being the magnificent sights of... the hotel's breakfast bar.

Next, the tour visits the Cenacle, the legendary site of the Last Supper. While there, Ned prays for Homer's eyes to be opened to the spirituality of the land, but instead finds Homer and Bart acting irreverently within the building, further irritating Ned.

The tour then visits the Wailing Wall, where Bart runs amok, and finds himself on the receiving end of a Krav Maga beating administered by Dorit.

Afterwards, the group finally arrives at the Church of the Holy Sepluchre, where Ned, in front of the tomb of Christ, prays in thanksgiving for what he perceives to be Homer's increase in spirituality... until he finds Homer splayed asleep upon the tomb's shrine. This finally enrages Ned. After realizing that Homer has used all of Flanders' camera's memory to take pictures of humorous Israeli soft drinks (such as OY!, Lemon-Lime OY! Diet Brisket, and one whose label is the Israeli flag with an exclamation point after the Star of David), he smashes the camera against the wall of the tomb, and is escorted out of the building by a group of Palestinian guards. Banned from the Church for life, he finally declares Homer completely incapable of salvation and storms off out the gates of Jerusalem. Homer, fearing he's going into the desert, follows, stealing a camel to rescue him... however, Flanders was merely grabbing some tea before going to see a movie to wind down from the encounter.

Homer rides his camel through he trackless desert, encountering a sandstorm. The camel rides off without him, stranding him in the middle of the desert, near the Dead Sea. Naturally, a thirsty Homer tries to drink the heavily salty water, and ends up temporarily comatose, seeing a vision of "Veggie Tales"-style characters who convince him that he is the Messiah. Just then, Marge and a rescue team find Homer and bring him back to the hospital, where he is ministered to by Doctor Hibbert, who diagnoses Homer as suffering from Jerusalem Syndrome. He escapes from the hospital, convinced that he needs to pronounce his message at the Dome of the Rock ("Brought to you by Lemon-Lime OY!"), where he gathers a large crowd of Christians, Jews and Muslims to hear him expound on a new religion that keys in on the similarities of the three religions as opposed to their differences.

He's soon kicked off the Rock by Agnes Skinner, similarly believing herself to be the Messiah. Hibbert, under the same delusion, refuses to help.

Finally, the tour heads home, with Homer having a clearer view of is own spiritual life... though forgetting that people can buy goods from places other than the SkyMall in-flight magazine...

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Grea ... %80%99ohed

Episode Number     457
Production Code    MABF10
Original Airdate    March 28, 2010
Blackboard Text    None
Couch Gag    The Simpson's Are Dogs, at a Dog Show.
Billboard    None
Title Screen    Ralph Flies By On A Kite
Special Guest Voices    Sacha Baron Cohen as Jacob
Yael Naim as Doreet
Written By    Kevin Curran
Directed By    Michael Polcino
Credits

'Simpsons' go to the 'happiest place on earth'

    By Barnabe Geisweiller on April 3, 2010

When I learned the Simpsons, America's famous cartoon family, were going to Israel (S21E16), I thought: Oy vey!

The episode predictably glosses over the real Israel. All is well in cartoon Israel. The Muslims in Jerusalem are voiceless, sour-faced caricatures that prostrate themselves in the street (perhaps the Israeli security forces had sealed off the entrance to the Noble Sanctuary, home of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque). There is of course no mention of that dirty, little word: Palestine. No, Israel is the Holy Land, Jerusalem is "the happiest place on earth."

But the writers of the episode seemed intent on doing more than just ignoring the reality of the 5 million Palestinians in Israel-Palestine: they thought it would be funny to diss them too.

The Simpsons' Israeli tour guide takes the family straight to the Dome of the Rock, as though that was no big deal, and stupidly tells Marge: "OK, this shrine contains the rock on which Abraham was going to sacrifice his son. And Muslims believe something, too. To find out, hire a Muslim tour guide—that's a barrel of laughs."

But the real insult comes earlier on as the Simpsons land in Israel, and Krusty the Clown heads to the Gaza Strip Club. Get it? Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip Club. It's comedic retardation, and it's unbelievably insulting to the 1.5 million Palestinians forced to live there under an Israeli blockade. The Gaza Strip was intentionally de-developed after Israel withdrew its colonial-military infrastructure, and much of the strip was devastated by Israel's offensive there over a year ago. To compare the Gaza Strip to something that is consider haram, meaning against God, in Islam, is an outrage. Could you imagine Krusty the Clown going to the Darfur Whore House, or the Haiti Bordello? No, people would be livid. But the Palestinians have been so thoroughly dehumanized in America that this tasteless joke raised no eyebrows.

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/04 ... %E2%80%99/

References

    * The title is a reference to the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told.
          o This episode has the second title that makes a reference to this movie; the other episode is "The Wettest Stories Ever Told".
    * Among the sites the cast visits are:
          o The Cenacle, the traditional site of the Last Supper
          o The Wailing Wall, the last remaining portion of the Second Temple (and the closest that Jews today can actually get to the Temple Mount, due to Jewish religious restrictions -- fear of accidentally treading on the site of the Holy of Holies)
          o The Church of the Holy Sepluchre, the site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial
          o The Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest site in Islam (in reality, Homer and any other non-Muslim would be forbidden entrance)
          o The Dead Sea
    * The Reformers parody film parodies both the Transformers franchise and the different movements in modern Judaism (particularly the more liberal Reform branch and the conservative Orthodox branch)

edit Trivia

    * The set air date is Palm Sunday. Executive Producer Al Jean said "so it'll be a show that all faiths can come together and be offended by".

[VoltaXebec]

But the real insult comes earlier on as the Simpsons land in Israel, and Krusty the Clown heads to the Gaza Strip Club. Get it? Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip Club. It's comedic retardation, and it's unbelievably insulting to the 1.5 million Palestinians forced to live there under an Israeli blockade. The Gaza Strip was intentionally de-developed after Israel withdrew its colonial-military infrastructure, and much of the strip was devastated by Israel's offensive there over a year ago. To compare the Gaza Strip to something that is consider haram, meaning against God, in Islam, is an outrage. Could you imagine Krusty the Clown going to the Darfur Whore House, or the Haiti Bordello? No, people would be livid. But the Palestinians have been so thoroughly dehumanized in America that this tasteless joke raised no eyebrows.

Have not watched this for many years but I kind of remember Krusty the Clown was a jew.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

More on Jewish Cultural Corruption.

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This story is on Mike Reiss the Jewish Producer of the Simpsons:

'The Simpsons' Jewish Core -- Karen Buckelew Staff Writer
NOVEMBER 05, 2004

This year's Irving Blum Memorial Seminar at Pikesville's Beth Tfiloh Synagogue was somewhat more animated than usual — in more ways than one. Mike Reiss, a producer on the long-running hit television show "The Simpsons," was the keynote speaker last Sunday morning, Oct. 31, ...

Mr. Reiss' speech was perhaps a little racier than the typical fare at a modern Orthodox synagogue, ...

----- SNIP -----

"This is as clean as I can make it!" Mr. Reiss declared while signing autographs after his speech, adding that the usual forum for his speaking engagements are college campuses. "That's a much filthier speech. College kids like to hear men their fathers' age talk that way. It's pretty colorful."

Mr. Reiss, a Harvard University graduate, produced more than 200 episodes and wrote a dozen scripts during his 11 years with "The Simpsons." He left the show to co-create another animated series, "The Critic," which starred Jon Lovitz. He since has returned to "The Simpsons" as a consulting producer....

Mr. Reiss' humor last Sunday certainly hovered over all things Jewish, as he took advantage of the rare opportunity to share his inside jokes with an all-Jewish crowd. And nothing was sacred — not even his mother....

He opened his speech, though, with some political humor — and he certainly grabbed his audience's attention right out of the gate, describing President Bush as "Satan with a learning disorder." Sen. John Kerry, he said, "is the child that would have been born had John F. Kennedy married Frankenstein."

Mr. Reiss, jumping abruptly from one topic to another in the proud tradition of "The Simpsons" style of comedy, then described himself as "an L.A. Jew. I'm Jew-ish."

He added with pregnant pauses: "I would never eat a ham sandwich ... in a synagogue ... on Yom Kippur ... if anyone was watching."

Life in a small town without much Jewish culture was not easy for the young Mr. Reiss. "The toughest thing about growing up in a small town was that I look so Jewish," he said. "I put myself through college modeling for hate literature." [yuk, yuk, yuk. Get's 'em every time, eh Mike?]

After Harvard, Mr. Reiss said, he spent time writing for Johnny Carson, Garry Shandling and — he added in a self- deprecating tone — "Alf," the 1980s television program starring a furry brown alien puppet.

"One reason I write comedy," he said, "is because I can't help myself. Why do so many Jews go into comedy? No heavy lifting, no equipment to buy — unless you're Carrot Top, and I'm not even sure he's Jewish. Or a comedian."

About half "The Simpsons" writing staff is Jewish, Mr. Reiss noted. Three of the performers — Harry Shearer, Julie Kavner and Hank Azaria — are Jewish as well. Since each performer voices a number of animated characters, many of the show's regulars have Jewish voices — including, ironically, Ned Flanders, the Simpsons' clueless, devoutly Christian neighbor.

Mr. Reiss spoke of the show's history — it was canceled in Japan because the characters have four fingers, a sign of membership in the Japanese mafia. In its first season, the show was canceled in France after one episode featured Marge Simpson on a misadventure in France. Smithers, the assistant to Homer Simpson's crotchety boss, Mr. Burns, originally was a black character — instead, the writers made him gay.

Mr. Reiss showed the audience clips from the show, including one episode he wrote about Lisa Simpson's crush on her teacher. The teacher was supposed to be modeled after a teacher Mr. Reiss had as a boy. Because Mr. Reiss' teacher had a deformity, he said, he asked the show's animators to give the character a deformity.

"The deformity they gave him," he explained, "was they made him look like me." A clip showed Lisa swooning over her noticeably Jewish teacher, gushing about his "Semitic good looks."

But Mr. Reiss' favorite episode, he told the crowd, was when Krusty the Clown — the Simpsons' hard-drinking, troubled children's show host — reunited with his father, an Orthodox rabbi. In developing that show, he said, he found himself making late-night phone calls to research sources, saying things like, "Rabbi, are there any clowns in the Book of Leviticus?"

----- SNIP -----

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Torah from Simpsons
Jews & Judaism pervade this animated sitcom and its fictional town of Springfield.
By Mark I. Pinsky

Reprinted with permission from The Gospel According to The Simpsons (Westminster John Knox Press).

The many jokes squeezed into each episode of The Simpsons weave together two distinct strands of humor: On the one hand, the snarky, icon­oclastic nastiness embodied by Harvard Universty's Lampoon magazine; and on the other, the dark, rapid-fire, angst of Borscht Belt tummlers ("roisterers") and shpritzers ("sprayers") such as Lenny Bruce and Don Rickles.

None is more typical of this Jewish strain of humor than the exchange between Bart's friend Milhouse and Lisa in the Exodus segment of the episode, "Simpson Bible Stories." In this dream sequence, Milhouse is Moses. He has just led the Israelite slaves across the Red Sea, only to learn that what lies ahead is 40 years of wandering in the desert. But after that, he asks Lisa hopefully, "it's clear sailing for the Jews, isn't that right?" Lisa, unwilling to break the news of what the next 3,000 years holds for the Chosen People, smiles tightly and says, "Well, more or less."jewish humor quiz
Jewish Springfield

There is an Orthodox synagogue in town, with the improbable name of Temple Beth Springfield, located not far from Rev­erend Lovejoy's First Church of Springfield. The two houses of worship are so close, in fact, that once the church marquee carried the decidedly non-ecumenical message: "No Synagogue Parking."

Otherwise, relations between Lovejoy and Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky are cordial. The rabbi, bearded and dressed in the black garb of the Hasidim, is a regular on the minister's weekly call-in radio show, "Gabbin' about God." Ortho­dox rabbis are often wary of such interfaith dialogues, but Krustofsky does not conform to this stereotype. According to The Simpsons' Guide to Springfield, the rabbi plays basketball against Lovejoy in the annual "Springfield Two-Man Interfaith Jimmy Jam." Each Friday, according to the same guide, the synagogue offers a regular Friday Sabbath dinner that includes gefilte fish and Manischewitz wine....

Springfield's synagogue advertises a popular sermon topic
Reinforcing Stereotypes

Jewish references thread through The Simpsons, and they sometimes reinforce stereotypes. The local Jewish hospital is considered the best, if the most pricey, according to an ambulance driver. An unnamed Jewish child can be seen in an occasional suburban crowd scene, called in from the playground to practice his music.

There is still an "old neighborhood" downtown, Springfield's Lower East Side, where Jews lived before mov­ing to the suburbs. This is where Krustofsky's synagogue is located and where visitors can dine at restaurants such as Tannen's Fatty Meats and Izzy's Deli. In real life, if there were enough Jews in Springfield, the syn­agogue would have followed the migration from the urban center to the suburbs, the pattern in most American cities of any size. Thus, the town's small Jewish community is marginalized and often misunderstood in ways that are still common in small Protestant communities in the Americanheartland.

Related problems facing modern American Jewry in such towns--assimilation and how to fit into an overwhelmingly Christian society--are raised in various ways in The Simpsons. Thus, we learn that Kent Brockman, the local television news anchor and member of Spring­field Community Church, started his broadcasting career as Kenny Brockelstein and still wears a pendant around his neck with the Hebrew word chai (life).

This environment gives rise to a kind of unconscious anti-Semitism. For example, Lovejoy keeps the rabbi's address and phone number on his "non-Christian Rolodex." At the elementary school, Principal Skinner is heard fielding an angry call from the superintendent. "I know Weinstein's parents were upset," he stammers. "But, but, ah, I was sure it was a phony excuse. I mean, it sounds so made-up: 'Yom Kip-pur." The Day of Atone­ment, the holiest day of the year for Jews, is completely unfamiliar to the school principal.

When Homer needs $50,000 for a heart bypass, he goes to the rabbi, pretending to be Jewish in the only way he knows how. "Now, I know I haven't been the best Jew, but I have rented Fiddler on the Roof and I will watch it," he says. All he gets from the rabbi is a dreidel. In another episode, while visiting New York City, Homer mis­takes several Hasidic rabbis--black-clad and bearded--for the Texas rock group ZZ Top, who favor the same attire plus sunglasses. Finally, Bart works a sympathy scam in the shopping mall wearing a yarmulke, pre­tending that his bar mitzvah cake has just been smashed.



Krusty the Clown reads from the Torah at his adult bar mitzvah



Krusty the Jewish Clown

Just as Ned Flanders and Reverend Lovejoy embody Protestant Chris­tianity on The Simpsons, the character Krusty the Clown represents the Jews. The host of a popular children's show on the local television station, Krusty was introduced during the 1989-1990 season in a short for The Tracey Ullman Show. Series creator Matt Groening, who wrote the episode, said in an interview that Krusty came as "a sudden inspiration on the part of a couple of writers" for the show....

Krusty's show on The Simpsons features live gags and routines before an audience of kids, along with violent cartoons starring a cat and mouse named Itchy and Scratchy. And Krusty is Jewish, very Jewish. His picture forms a stylized Jewish star on his dressing room door. Yet Dalton, Mazur, and Siems, in their book God in the Details, see Krusty as "a gross caricature of a stereotypical secularized Jew corrupted by wealth and fame" who "dislikes children (and) finances his lavish debt-ridden lifestyle by over-marketing his own image unabashedly."...

Yiddish expressions, usually voiced by Krusty, abound: tucchus (butt) and yutz (empty head), plotz (burst), bupkes (nothing), ferkakteh (execrable), schlemiel (bungler), and schmutz (mess). The clown refers to his long-lost daughter as "my lucky little hamentaschen," a reference to triangular pastry eaten on the holiday of Purim. Other Yiddish words and puns and double entendres also pop up. Springfield's miniature golf course is sometimes (but not always) called "Sir Putts-a-Lot." The Yiddish word putz means penis. Krusty's middle name is "Schmoikel," which sounds like the diminutive of another Yiddish term for penis.

There are other in-jokes that were obviously written by Jews for other Jews. A casino boat travels from Springfield beyond the territorial limit to allow activities forbidden by U.S. law. In a fleeting shot, a man in a tuxedo, under a canopy, is seen marrying a cow in what is clearly a Jewish wedding ceremony--then the groom smashes with his foot a glass wrapped in a napkin.

The Jewish content of The Simpsons inspired one fan, Brian Rosman, a health policy researcher at a Brandeis University think tank, to create a website that features still shots from the episode "Like Father, Like Clown" under the heading, "Jewish Life in Springfield."

Rosman believes that: "The Simpsons does the funniest, most authentic parodies of Jewish life among all the comedy shows on TV, certainly compared to shows that are considered more 'Jewish,' like Seinfeld. The Simpsons demonstrates a more intuitive understanding of American Jewish history, Jewish reli­gion and culture, and Judaism's place among all the other varieties of belief and identity in America. I only wish there was more Jewish con­tent on the show, because when they do it, they do it very well."


Everyone loves to play dreidel now and again--even the Simpsons.

Crypto-Jewish Springfield

Actually, there may be more than Rosman realizes. Apart from Krusty, The Simpsons from time to time suggests an underlying element of what might be called "crypto-Judaism." In one of the opening chalkboard sequences, Bart writes, "I am not the reincarnation of Sammy Davis Jr." While watching the "Rapping Rabbis" on television, Homer asks Marge, "Are we Jewish?" Sight gags in the series also extend this conceit. A meno­rah--the Hanukkah candelabra--is seen in the Simpsons' family storage closet, without comment on how or why it got there.

Several other char­acters in the show, ostensibly not Jewish, can be read by their names and their view of life as otherwise distinctly Jewish: Homer's father, Abe, and Marge's twin sisters, Selma and Patty Bouvier.

In manner and disposition, Abe, a child immigrant from "the old country," is every alte kocker (old fart) sitting around a swimming pool in Miami Beach, complaining about his declining health and the ungrateful younger generation. His absent wife, Penelope Olsen, Homer's mother, is a '60s radical and free spirit whose anti-germ warfare activities forced her underground for 25 years. Her Scandinavian name notwithstanding, she could be Jewish; she fits the profile.

The Bouvier sisters are also familiar types: sharp-tongued unmarried aunts and sisters-in-law, their dialogue taken directly from the late Selma Diamond or Fran Leibowitz or Sandra Bernhard. And accord­ing to Matt Groening's The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album, Mont­gomery Burns's sister, Cornelia, has five grandsons named Bernstein: David, Levi, Moshe, Murray, and Saul.

So, latent or blatant, is the portrayal of Jews in The Simpsons on balance a positive one, likely to encourage understanding among society at large? Rabbis seem to think that itis, although not entirely without qualifi­cation.

Rabbi Steven Engel of the Congregation of Liberal Judaism, a Reform temple in Orlando, says, "For Jews, humor has always been as reflective as our holy writings and sacred liturgy in expressing our feel­ings, concerns, aspirations, and in bringing to light the realities we face. Our general understanding is that humor has contributed to our ability to survive as a people. There is no question that The Simpsons' Springfield in many ways accurately reflects the feelings, concerns, aspirations, and real­ities of contemporary Jews. It is certainly funny stuff and does make peo­ple laugh. But is it good for the Jews? I suppose that depends upon who is doing most of the laughing, why they are laughing, and to whom the laughter is directed."
Mark I. Pinsky

Mark I. Pinsky is the religion reporter for The Orlando Sentinel.