‘The Simpsons’ Will Never Be Political Like ‘South Park,’ Showrunner Claims

We shouldn’t expect to see Donald Trump’s microdick on The Simpsons anytime soon — not just because of Fox’s nudity-averse censors, but because of the show’s approach to political satire.

Given South Park’s recent headline-grabbing takedowns of the Trump administration, as well as the White House’s attempted crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, following The Simpsons’ 37th season premiere on Sunday, Entertainment Weekly asked showrunner Matt Selman about how the long-running show will approach the current political moment.

“Well, when you write a show that doesn’t come out until 10 months after you write it, it kind of takes the pressure off, because who knows what the fuck we’re gonna be looking at in 10 months,” Selman explained. “So like South Park, they make their show in a week, and even they can’t stay up to date on things. More crazy shit goes down faster than even they can do it. And you know, Jimmy Kimmel’s great, and I’m glad he is back on TV. Censorship sucks. What can I say? Censorship sucks.”

“But it’s not our mission statement to respond to the crisis of the moment,” he continued. “It’s more about a town of good-natured dum-dums dealing with a changing world, yet our characters never really change. The world changes around them.”

When asked whether or not any topics were “off-limits” in the Trump 2.0 era, Selman didn’t seem too concerned, and stressed that the Simpsons writers don’t currently feel any pressure to dial the political content either down or up. “We’re not gonna do a big show where the president comes to town. We did do that, but he was George Bush, and he’d been out of office for quite some time. And, you know, we just don’t do big topical things, ‘cause the topical is so chaotic and nuts. So we have to look at the bigger trends.”

But just because The Simpsons doesn’t typically address specific up-to-the-minute political developments, that doesn’t mean that the show won’t continue to tackle ideas and themes that are very pertinent to today’s political climate. “Ideally, I would like to think that people on both sides of our divided nation can watch The Simpsons and feel that, like America, Springfield is a town of people who are good, but easily misled,” Selman argued. “Whatever your definition of misled is, you can apply that to the show.”

Although, to be fair to the residents of Springfield, at least they didn’t vote to give all the town’s money to traveling monorail salesman/con artist Lyle Lanley a second time.