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NEWS ROUNDUP

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  • The Simpsons lost every Annie Award it was nominated for (including one for the infamous rag episode), but Simpsons alumni Rich Moore won Best Director and his film Wreck-It Ralph won Best Feature, so good for him!
  • My Google Alert for “Yeardley Smith sex tape” has finally beared fruit! Here is a photo of Lisa Simpson’s voice actress cavorting with a naked man in broad daylight.
  • Simpsons producer James L. Brooks is literally on the National Rifle Association’s enemies list. No word on Matt “NRA4EVER” Groening, though.
  • Speaking of Brooks, looks like he got his Twitter hacked, with little success at stopping it. He appears to be waging a hilarious battle with the Twitter-jacker over which one is the real one. Just goes to show you, even if you’re a big-time Hollywood mega-producer, you can still get your stuff hacked. Stay protected, yo. [via @vmcampos]
  • Former showrunner Bill Oakley posted the pre-distortion audio file of Ned Flanders from Homer’s chili-induced hallucination. Much respect for Harry Shearer.
  • UNRELATED SIMPSONS IN THE NEWS: 81-year old ex-senator Alan Simpson, namesake of the Simpson-Bowles commission, attempted to perform the Gangnam Style dance in a bid to turn young people into granny-starving deficit hawks. [via kushibo]
ANNOYED GRUNTS

In last Sunday’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode, fictional school bully and noted haw-hawer Nelson Muntz called a giant pumpkin “super gay,” a homophobic slur that has a national gay organization all a-twitter.

The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a non-fictional organization that focuses on facilitating positive social change in schools, sent the following statement to celebrity-stalking megablog TMZ:

Nelson’s use of ‘that’s so gay’ in a negative way is not surprising considering that 90 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth say they hear the term used this way frequently or often at school. Nelson should visit ThinkB4YouSpeak.com where he can send an apologetic e-card to Milhouse. GLSEN would also welcome Nelson’s participation in our next PSA so he can make amends by helping to educate young people about why such language is wrong.

Technically Nelson said, “The Grand Pumpkin’s super gay,” and it was directed at the Grand Pumpkin, not Milhouse, but who cares? I’m just glad GLSEN found the time to follow in the grand footsteps of Dan Quayle and complain about a fictional TV character instead of, I don’t know, maybe fighting to keep same-sex marriage legal in California? [TMZ]

ANNOYED GRUNTS

ptc presidentThe Parents Television Council, a media watchdog organization that aims to “promote and restore responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry,” recently examined the Fox network’s hatred of mothers:

In 1987, TV’s respectful treatment of mothers began to be replaced by an attitude of mockery and contempt – and unsurprisingly, it was the Fox network that began the trend. Married with Children‘s Peg Bundy was portrayed as shallow, vapid, incompetent at domestic chores (and everything else) and obsessed with sex. Dressed to resemble a prostitute, the Peg Bundy character also seemed to act and think like one. The constant put-downs directed at Peg by her crude and moronic husband character were echoed by equally intense contempt from her children.

And in the two decades since Married with Children‘s premiere nothing has changed, except that the mockery, contempt and even hatred shown towards mothers on Fox has become even more vicious and sadistic.

The May 11th episode of The Simpsons focused on the death of Homer’s mother, a former radical who abandoned him as a child. The now-deceased mother leaves her daughter-in-law Marge a purse made of hemp, as Bart informs his father that Grandma said “you don’t suck…THAT much.”

Yet The Simpsons‘ depiction of motherhood was as nothing compared to that seen on Seth MacFarlane’s animated “comedy” Family Guy. In celebration of Mother’s Day, Fox chose to rerun an episode in which Baby Stewie murders his own mother – after plotting to torture her…

For shame, Fox. [Parents Television Council]

ANNOYED GRUNTS

The Simpsons Movie got a thumbs-down at something called “The Hackademy Awards,” an event run by an anti-smoking group called Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails designed to counter positive portrayals of cigarette smoking in movies. The scene that raised their ire: the 3-second shot of Jimbo smoking with Dolph, “which is the kind of potent endorsement of smoking the group opposes.” Remember: smokers are jokers. [canada.com]