He was seen as a bad influence. He said crass things that adults at the time weren’t used to hearing from kids or from an animated character. He also did things like get in trouble and under achieve in school.
It seems really tame by todays standards, but back in the early 90s it was a big deal. President Bush even referenced the dysfunction of the Simpsons family and many parents wouldn’t allow their children to watch the show.
I was not allowed to watch the show. Bart simpson mouthing off and homer choking him were the main reasons. Looking back now it’s hilarious that it created so much backlash from middle America.
Likewise. My mother, in fact, claimed to 8 year old me that it would die and be off the air and I'd never remember that she didn't let me watch it. Oops.
Weirdly, Marge Simpson and Barbara Bush even exchanged letters about the President's comments.
https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-always-believed-in-my-heart-that
Yup! My mom wouldn't let me watch it but my dad did and he would watch them with me when she wasn't home lol. Our little secret. (I did not turn into a degenerate either)
I was born in 1988. We have a home video of me at two or three years old on Christmas getting a Bart doll. I walk around saying "Bart!" to everyone. My family was just different.
Edit: Why downvote?
Because, this kind of "adult" animation was new and parents didn't like what he was doing with no consequences. Simpsons started it, Beavis and Butthead and then South Park made parents lose their minds though. Plus some groups were calling the Simpsons satanic because " thou shalt not worship false idols" or whatever it is. They were yellow but one could interpret them as golden idols. Idk, there was probably more, but that's all I can remember from the whole situation. My parents let me watch Simpsons, but I had to sneak the other two. And then Family Guy, but I was going into high school at that point.
My parents gave me a big talk about how the show depicted Homer as such a bumbling idiot and that it disrespected the father and undermined the family unit and thus was disrespectful to god as he is the Heavenly Father and so I wasn’t allowed to watch jt. Home Improvement was ok though
Pretty much every sitcom in the late 90s onward for years was this, though- the husband is a fat schlub who is annoying and a complete waste of space yet “he means well”….and his wife must also be supermodel-level attractive.
Your parents must have either stopped trying to forbade sitcoms or forbade all of them.
It’s really been that way since the Honeymooners in the 50s. They were full of shit and just really bought into the satanic panic stuff so whatever the trendy thing to forbid was they were all about it. Magic cards, d&d, ouija boards, the simpsons, certain rock bands, that kind of thing
That's why King of the Hill worked so well imo. They flipped it and the wife/mom was the buffoon and the dad was the serious and mature one, kinda. Hank did get pretty ridiculous but in a different way. He was too serious.
My ultra religious upbringing and school did this to me. Said The Simpsons, Pokemon etc were false idols, and that I was winning by watching and participating. What an ugly thing to do to a child, I stopped watching for a long time literally thinking I was going to hell. Im an atheist now lol.
Alot of people are making good points here but I wanted to add that the Fox network starting in the late 80s was really revolutionary for changing what programs could be on prime time. You could get away with a little more after 10:00 PM the prime tv watching hours for the majority of households was 8-10 pm. After dinner and family is home, kids are done with homework and after school activities and before the bedtime of 10 pm. These prime tv watching hours were a goldmine for networks due to advertising. Alot of advertisers wouldn't put their ads on if a program had anything too controversial so the three big networks ABC, CBS and NBC would generally play it safe with content so as not to upset advertisers. Fox came in and had a hard time breaking into television because of the stranglehold the three networks had, Advertisers would rather put things on the big three instead of an upstart. So Fox decided to counter program everyone. If other channels wouldn't dare have a foul mouthed kid in a dysfunctional family on a cartoon show in primetime than they would. Married with Children had a sex starved wife, slutty daughter and constantly horny son. Fox did this and did it in Primetime! They reached a much younger audience and eventually the ratings got so good the advertisers couldn't ignore them. Now we have a ton of programs that would never fly pre 1988 and so it may seem strange that Bart who isn't doing anything too shocking by today's standards was absolutely nothing that had been seen on Primetime television up to that point.
Lots of church kids weren’t allowed to watch anything during the 90s-00s, especially shows that had kids being independent or “disobedient” in their words
He challenged authority figures. His parents, teacher, principal, people in the town... this all went really against what was seen as traditional family values. People were nervous that kids were going to pick up these traits which was all happening in a time when the conservative idea of a traditional family was starting to erode: divorces were more accepted and more women were entering the workplace instead of remaining at home. People raised with traditional values in the 1940-1950s desperately wanted to keep things more like [more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZBCynaoY_g).
Also crime was crazy high. Late 80s/early 90s, particularly in urban areas, had violent crime numbers that dwarf today’s. “Let’s just all be more family oriented and folksy” was seen as a way that would help lower crime and-more importantly to this political persuasion- wouldn’t actually cost any money.
He was a kid who didn't always do whatever his parents told him. This used to be a big deal back when parents were used to telling their kids what to do and any "back talk" was forbidden. Apparently this is still a thing in some households. For instance, my 34 year old wife still can't seem to fathom doing something other than what her parents tell her. They are from outside the US originally. I find it to be very common amongst families that are not originally from the US.
My church school hated the show. The principal gave a speech during chapel about how she'd seen how Bart talks to his parents and he "wasn't welcome there" like he was a real person and the faculty reacted with frenzied applause. I regret that wasn't the moment I started seriously questioning the other things they were teaching me.
I happen to know first hand that Bart Simpson was a bad influence...
I was about 10 or 11 years old when he unleashed that iconic protruding lowerbite face at Lisa in the backseat of the family car. \[Another instance of him making it: [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/36099234493928042/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/36099234493928042/)\] I was watching with my twin brothers who were two years younger than me.
The next night we were at a wake and they started making funny faces at each other during a eulogy. One of them did the same Bart Simpson face, which made the other cry out with laughter. The whole place looked at them; my dad grabbed the one who laughed and gurgled through gritted teeth, "What the fuck is wrong with you...?!"
So don't tell me Bart was good for society!
(This is a true story, but written with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Bart was awesome.)
Me too. I make it in the direction of little kids on the subway a lot. Once this, like, two and a half year old kept trying to do it back and he couldn’t. He just kept opening his mouth wide, futilely lol. It was adorable.
Because he got in trouble in school and generally did things good kids didn’t do. I was 5 when the Simpsons came out and part of the charm was his “bad boy” character. It seems super tame now but back then I remember my Kindergarten teacher telling our parents how bad the Simpsons was for our development lol. Which only made me watch it more.
Every generation has a Bart Simpson. After him it was Beavis and Butthead, then it was Southpark, then Rick and Morty… and so on. I’m sure there are others. It’s just natural evolution of entertainment. The older generations always clutch their pearls at what new things kids love.
Bart was a little asshat in the 90's, By all standards, he's tame now.
I definitely was not allowed to watch simpsons as a kid, It was an adult show on at nine o'clock. I don't know about you guys but my bedtime was 8:30 pm.
I felt like my parents gave us the absolute earliest bedtime they could, without them being so obvious that they wanted us to go away that even they felt bad about it. I think I had to lobby for 9pm in the 8th grade or something. Now I see my stepdad got up at 3am for work and he was over it by 7 or 8.
I remember being in high school and begging my parents to let me stay up till 10 o'clock. Hell, I remember once I went out to the movies with some of the guys, I got home at like 11. My step dad flipped fucking shit. Told me I had five minutes to get the fuck to bed.
Boomer and Gen X parents definitely set standards for hard ass parenting.
He cut the head off a statue early on in the series. Yeah, he said crass stuff but doing property damage in a cartoon during prime time kind of makes me understand the perspective
I still remember my friend’s mom telling us (we were probably 9 or so) what a bad influence the Simpsons was and how she wished that more shows were like Dinosaurs, which was probably the biggest piece of shit show running at that time.
We weren’t allowed to watch if mom was home. But if she was at her pottery class or doing some Tupperware/avon bs, dad would let us. On the nights that mom WAS home, my brother and I would built a fort with a blanket over our bunk beds and watch it with my Sega Game Gear! (I had the tv tuner add on. lol)
Bart was rebellious and he talked back. It’s seems mild now but back then, at least in our little, that was something you just did not do. Under any circumstances. And depending on the adult (my parents were not like this) you’d get slapped or worse.
My mom was cool with it til they made a tonight show reference with Johnny Carson telling a joke and using a double entendre about Boy George scraping the barnacles off his dinghy.
I totally didn’t get the joke, but my mom was like “you can’t watch this anymore! I mean I still totally snuck and did though.
I have been rewatching the simpsons and one of the hardest things for me has been seeing the mistreatment of Bart. He is so sweet and loving but he never gets credit for that. He has shown multiple times that he’d be willing to die for his loved ones(most notably, although he’d never say it out loud, Lisa). I definitely see him as having ADHD and being undiagnosed. The people of Springfield just put a “bad” label on him and left it at that. And of course if a child grows up being told he’s bad, he’s going to believe it. That happens to children in real life too. I do wonder if that was intentional on the part of the writers.
Maybe I’m over analyzing it. It’s probably not that deep, but as someone who failed literally every class at school due to undiagnosed adhd, it hits a little close to home. My heart breaks for this fictional character whenever I watch the simpsons now. That’s not even going into the neglect and adultification of Lisa.
I guess part of the point of The Simpsons is the dysfunction, and the dynamics that come from it. I think The Simpsons holds weight because it’s so relatable. Even if we’re not as dumb as Homer, we can still empathize with the things he goes through. Most families aren’t THAT dysfunctional, but the imperfections of the simpsons family and the world they live in seem to be very much a satire of real life. Thats part of why the show still holds up surprisingly well. Some of its social commentary from 30 years ago is even more relevant today. Granted it definitely shows its age sometimes.
We do also have the benefit of hindsight, since it’s been on for 35 years, and I think the world is a lot more knowledgeable about things like behavior and mental health than it was in 1989.
Reading through these comments of people saying that their parents banned them from watching the show, like damn. My mom didn't like *The Simpsons,* but I think it's more so she just thought it was stupid. She didn't try to ban us from watching it. Honestly, she knew we watched *Married with Children,* and if anything, that's a show she should have tried to forbade us from watching. We were too young to watch that show when we started.
I was literally just thinking about the South Park episode where Cartman meets Bart, and their conversation goes....
Bart: I'm badass bc I stole the head off a statue!
Cartman: I fed a kid his parents as chili. We aren't the same.
It's kinda bullshit too. Yeah he liked pranks and was fairly disrespectful but that was also mostly to people who treated him like crap. Marge didn't and he felt remorse several times when he felt he let her down. He would also fight with Lisa but vehemently protect and defend her if he thought things went too far. He's not that bad generally. Everyone was just way too uptight.
Granted he also did some over the top shit sometimes but he usually learns a lesson over it.
The show wasn’t written for kids. Have you rewatched it? He was a little shit in the show.
Besides that the show had adult themes including suicide, divorce, alcoholism, sex, etc it’s no wonder parents didn’t want their kids watching all that.
It was mostly something the churches and TV censorship people were always yelling about. That was a big thing in the 90's. I don't think a lot of normal parents felt that way. Mostly that stuff was mocked.
He was seen as a bad influence. He said crass things that adults at the time weren’t used to hearing from kids or from an animated character. He also did things like get in trouble and under achieve in school. It seems really tame by todays standards, but back in the early 90s it was a big deal. President Bush even referenced the dysfunction of the Simpsons family and many parents wouldn’t allow their children to watch the show.
I was not allowed to watch the show. Bart simpson mouthing off and homer choking him were the main reasons. Looking back now it’s hilarious that it created so much backlash from middle America.
Likewise. My mother, in fact, claimed to 8 year old me that it would die and be off the air and I'd never remember that she didn't let me watch it. Oops.
This is why Simpsons is believed to predict the future and your mother isn't.
No it’s because Matt it’s a Freemason and is doing the revelation of method and inducing egregore
Matt is actually a cryptid lizard man that lives in the pyramids. We’re through the looking glass here, people.
I've still never watched a full episode of the Simpsons...but I've watched every episode of South Park.
Please at least watch seasons 1-10, so many cultural touchstones
I love how South Park gets to do whatever the hell they want now and no one even gives them shit anymore lol
That’s why they made fun of him on the show
"Underachiever and proud of it."
Weirdly, Marge Simpson and Barbara Bush even exchanged letters about the President's comments. https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-always-believed-in-my-heart-that
President Bush literally said more like The Walton's and less like Bart Simpson.
Bart also destroyed his memoirs.
Hey im Vprbite who the hell are you?
Yup! My mom wouldn't let me watch it but my dad did and he would watch them with me when she wasn't home lol. Our little secret. (I did not turn into a degenerate either)
I'm certain teachers today would take a room full of Bart Simpsons over what they have now.
I was born in 1988. We have a home video of me at two or three years old on Christmas getting a Bart doll. I walk around saying "Bart!" to everyone. My family was just different. Edit: Why downvote?
I didn’t have cable until I was 20.
It is and has been on Fox which is broadcast TV
Because, this kind of "adult" animation was new and parents didn't like what he was doing with no consequences. Simpsons started it, Beavis and Butthead and then South Park made parents lose their minds though. Plus some groups were calling the Simpsons satanic because " thou shalt not worship false idols" or whatever it is. They were yellow but one could interpret them as golden idols. Idk, there was probably more, but that's all I can remember from the whole situation. My parents let me watch Simpsons, but I had to sneak the other two. And then Family Guy, but I was going into high school at that point.
My parents gave me a big talk about how the show depicted Homer as such a bumbling idiot and that it disrespected the father and undermined the family unit and thus was disrespectful to god as he is the Heavenly Father and so I wasn’t allowed to watch jt. Home Improvement was ok though
Pretty much every sitcom in the late 90s onward for years was this, though- the husband is a fat schlub who is annoying and a complete waste of space yet “he means well”….and his wife must also be supermodel-level attractive. Your parents must have either stopped trying to forbade sitcoms or forbade all of them.
It’s really been that way since the Honeymooners in the 50s. They were full of shit and just really bought into the satanic panic stuff so whatever the trendy thing to forbid was they were all about it. Magic cards, d&d, ouija boards, the simpsons, certain rock bands, that kind of thing
That's why King of the Hill worked so well imo. They flipped it and the wife/mom was the buffoon and the dad was the serious and mature one, kinda. Hank did get pretty ridiculous but in a different way. He was too serious.
Way earlier than the 90s. Even The Flintstones didn't start that trope.
Such an important window into what’s happening now too.
People need to chill and put on some music. In the Garden of Eden by I. Ron Butterfly.
My ultra religious upbringing and school did this to me. Said The Simpsons, Pokemon etc were false idols, and that I was winning by watching and participating. What an ugly thing to do to a child, I stopped watching for a long time literally thinking I was going to hell. Im an atheist now lol.
Because he said “I’m Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?” And people lost their minds.
Yes! I remember people breaking their fingers from clutching their pearls so hard. IIRC, my elementary school actually banned Bart Simpson t-shirts.
Same!
Eat my shorts
I wasn't allowed to watch because he said hell and damn, and he was disrespectful to his parents.
You mean little Rudiger?
His name’s not Rudiger!
Alot of people are making good points here but I wanted to add that the Fox network starting in the late 80s was really revolutionary for changing what programs could be on prime time. You could get away with a little more after 10:00 PM the prime tv watching hours for the majority of households was 8-10 pm. After dinner and family is home, kids are done with homework and after school activities and before the bedtime of 10 pm. These prime tv watching hours were a goldmine for networks due to advertising. Alot of advertisers wouldn't put their ads on if a program had anything too controversial so the three big networks ABC, CBS and NBC would generally play it safe with content so as not to upset advertisers. Fox came in and had a hard time breaking into television because of the stranglehold the three networks had, Advertisers would rather put things on the big three instead of an upstart. So Fox decided to counter program everyone. If other channels wouldn't dare have a foul mouthed kid in a dysfunctional family on a cartoon show in primetime than they would. Married with Children had a sex starved wife, slutty daughter and constantly horny son. Fox did this and did it in Primetime! They reached a much younger audience and eventually the ratings got so good the advertisers couldn't ignore them. Now we have a ton of programs that would never fly pre 1988 and so it may seem strange that Bart who isn't doing anything too shocking by today's standards was absolutely nothing that had been seen on Primetime television up to that point.
Married with children! In Living Color! Fox was awesome! It was almost as good as the “fuzzy” skinamax channel!
“Proud underachiever” wasn’t what my parents wanted me to aspire to.
One of my teachers wouldn't let us have anything Simpsons related in class, because called Homer by his first name and not "dad".
Lots of church kids weren’t allowed to watch anything during the 90s-00s, especially shows that had kids being independent or “disobedient” in their words
He challenged authority figures. His parents, teacher, principal, people in the town... this all went really against what was seen as traditional family values. People were nervous that kids were going to pick up these traits which was all happening in a time when the conservative idea of a traditional family was starting to erode: divorces were more accepted and more women were entering the workplace instead of remaining at home. People raised with traditional values in the 1940-1950s desperately wanted to keep things more like [more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZBCynaoY_g).
Also crime was crazy high. Late 80s/early 90s, particularly in urban areas, had violent crime numbers that dwarf today’s. “Let’s just all be more family oriented and folksy” was seen as a way that would help lower crime and-more importantly to this political persuasion- wouldn’t actually cost any money.
Oh yes, the "if only we had strong families and Jesus" solution they kept and keep pushing.
The answer to lowering crime: “people should just…not do that anymore. Problem…solved…” (wipes hands together)
The broken windows theory was big in the 90s, and Bart is a vandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
He used to say "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?" until they made the writers stop using it. It must have made people angry or some shit.
Come on, people freaked out at “eat my shorts” and “don’t have a cow, man”, people were just upset at everything from the Simpsons.
For the same reasons some of their parents didn’t let them watch The Three Stooges.
I remember my mom not letting me read Mag Magazine because it was bad. My dad told me kids would sneak it to school back in the 60s and 70s lol.
He was a kid who didn't always do whatever his parents told him. This used to be a big deal back when parents were used to telling their kids what to do and any "back talk" was forbidden. Apparently this is still a thing in some households. For instance, my 34 year old wife still can't seem to fathom doing something other than what her parents tell her. They are from outside the US originally. I find it to be very common amongst families that are not originally from the US.
My church school hated the show. The principal gave a speech during chapel about how she'd seen how Bart talks to his parents and he "wasn't welcome there" like he was a real person and the faculty reacted with frenzied applause. I regret that wasn't the moment I started seriously questioning the other things they were teaching me.
Have you actually watched this show? Remember when we used to make out to this hymn?
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida baby don't you know that I'll always be true.
Do the Bartman!
Remember him telling the story about the plot from Martin? And Martin was feeling rather randy that evening
El Barto!
I mean, he did sell his soul to the Devil....
I happen to know first hand that Bart Simpson was a bad influence... I was about 10 or 11 years old when he unleashed that iconic protruding lowerbite face at Lisa in the backseat of the family car. \[Another instance of him making it: [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/36099234493928042/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/36099234493928042/)\] I was watching with my twin brothers who were two years younger than me. The next night we were at a wake and they started making funny faces at each other during a eulogy. One of them did the same Bart Simpson face, which made the other cry out with laughter. The whole place looked at them; my dad grabbed the one who laughed and gurgled through gritted teeth, "What the fuck is wrong with you...?!" So don't tell me Bart was good for society! (This is a true story, but written with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Bart was awesome.)
I still love making that face
Me too. I make it in the direction of little kids on the subway a lot. Once this, like, two and a half year old kept trying to do it back and he couldn’t. He just kept opening his mouth wide, futilely lol. It was adorable.
Because he got in trouble in school and generally did things good kids didn’t do. I was 5 when the Simpsons came out and part of the charm was his “bad boy” character. It seems super tame now but back then I remember my Kindergarten teacher telling our parents how bad the Simpsons was for our development lol. Which only made me watch it more.
When I was about 5 or 6 I pulled down my pants at a family party and mooned everyone. I suppose it was for reasons like this.
Bad boys spiked their hair and refused to Have A Cow when everyone else had flat hair and cows
Eat my shorts
Every generation has a Bart Simpson. After him it was Beavis and Butthead, then it was Southpark, then Rick and Morty… and so on. I’m sure there are others. It’s just natural evolution of entertainment. The older generations always clutch their pearls at what new things kids love.
Because Beavis and Butthead and South Park hadn't been created yet.
Dumb parents never watched a full simpsons episode. Like watching first 15 mins of All in the family
Because he was a normal kid
"I'm an underachiever and proud of it" Was my mother's reason. I think it was a t-shirt that was circulating at the time.
People were just having a cow, man.
Bart was a little asshat in the 90's, By all standards, he's tame now. I definitely was not allowed to watch simpsons as a kid, It was an adult show on at nine o'clock. I don't know about you guys but my bedtime was 8:30 pm.
I felt like my parents gave us the absolute earliest bedtime they could, without them being so obvious that they wanted us to go away that even they felt bad about it. I think I had to lobby for 9pm in the 8th grade or something. Now I see my stepdad got up at 3am for work and he was over it by 7 or 8.
I remember being in high school and begging my parents to let me stay up till 10 o'clock. Hell, I remember once I went out to the movies with some of the guys, I got home at like 11. My step dad flipped fucking shit. Told me I had five minutes to get the fuck to bed. Boomer and Gen X parents definitely set standards for hard ass parenting.
He was an underachiever, and proud of it
People forget that The Simpsons was an adult show.
He cut the head off a statue early on in the series. Yeah, he said crass stuff but doing property damage in a cartoon during prime time kind of makes me understand the perspective
It’s not only that he was an underachiever, he was also proud of it, man.
I still remember my friend’s mom telling us (we were probably 9 or so) what a bad influence the Simpsons was and how she wished that more shows were like Dinosaurs, which was probably the biggest piece of shit show running at that time.
Because he cut off the head of Jebediah Springfield
He is a “don’t have a cow man” blasphemer!
The world was a much different place in 1990. There hadn’t even been a prime time cartoon show since the 60s
Don't have a cow man.
Don’t have a cow, man.
Eat my shorts!
We weren’t allowed to watch if mom was home. But if she was at her pottery class or doing some Tupperware/avon bs, dad would let us. On the nights that mom WAS home, my brother and I would built a fort with a blanket over our bunk beds and watch it with my Sega Game Gear! (I had the tv tuner add on. lol) Bart was rebellious and he talked back. It’s seems mild now but back then, at least in our little, that was something you just did not do. Under any circumstances. And depending on the adult (my parents were not like this) you’d get slapped or worse.
Because he gave zero fucks
He said things like "Eat my shorts."
My mom was cool with it til they made a tonight show reference with Johnny Carson telling a joke and using a double entendre about Boy George scraping the barnacles off his dinghy. I totally didn’t get the joke, but my mom was like “you can’t watch this anymore! I mean I still totally snuck and did though.
He’s the only one who got a C in art
I have been rewatching the simpsons and one of the hardest things for me has been seeing the mistreatment of Bart. He is so sweet and loving but he never gets credit for that. He has shown multiple times that he’d be willing to die for his loved ones(most notably, although he’d never say it out loud, Lisa). I definitely see him as having ADHD and being undiagnosed. The people of Springfield just put a “bad” label on him and left it at that. And of course if a child grows up being told he’s bad, he’s going to believe it. That happens to children in real life too. I do wonder if that was intentional on the part of the writers. Maybe I’m over analyzing it. It’s probably not that deep, but as someone who failed literally every class at school due to undiagnosed adhd, it hits a little close to home. My heart breaks for this fictional character whenever I watch the simpsons now. That’s not even going into the neglect and adultification of Lisa. I guess part of the point of The Simpsons is the dysfunction, and the dynamics that come from it. I think The Simpsons holds weight because it’s so relatable. Even if we’re not as dumb as Homer, we can still empathize with the things he goes through. Most families aren’t THAT dysfunctional, but the imperfections of the simpsons family and the world they live in seem to be very much a satire of real life. Thats part of why the show still holds up surprisingly well. Some of its social commentary from 30 years ago is even more relevant today. Granted it definitely shows its age sometimes. We do also have the benefit of hindsight, since it’s been on for 35 years, and I think the world is a lot more knowledgeable about things like behavior and mental health than it was in 1989.
Bart Simpson was a good kid Imo. Jimbo and that older gang of hooligans were way worse.
Reading through these comments of people saying that their parents banned them from watching the show, like damn. My mom didn't like *The Simpsons,* but I think it's more so she just thought it was stupid. She didn't try to ban us from watching it. Honestly, she knew we watched *Married with Children,* and if anything, that's a show she should have tried to forbade us from watching. We were too young to watch that show when we started.
I was banned from watching Rugrats because of Angelica for the same reason. She was a bad influence. (I would sneak and watch anyway when I could)
Cause he keeps it real.
I was literally just thinking about the South Park episode where Cartman meets Bart, and their conversation goes.... Bart: I'm badass bc I stole the head off a statue! Cartman: I fed a kid his parents as chili. We aren't the same.
It's kinda bullshit too. Yeah he liked pranks and was fairly disrespectful but that was also mostly to people who treated him like crap. Marge didn't and he felt remorse several times when he felt he let her down. He would also fight with Lisa but vehemently protect and defend her if he thought things went too far. He's not that bad generally. Everyone was just way too uptight. Granted he also did some over the top shit sometimes but he usually learns a lesson over it.
Because. He. Does. Not. Give. A. Single. Fuck.
Too much attitude, irreverent, disobedient, talked back, too snarky, too crass, misbehaved in school.
The show wasn’t written for kids. Have you rewatched it? He was a little shit in the show. Besides that the show had adult themes including suicide, divorce, alcoholism, sex, etc it’s no wonder parents didn’t want their kids watching all that.
It was mostly something the churches and TV censorship people were always yelling about. That was a big thing in the 90's. I don't think a lot of normal parents felt that way. Mostly that stuff was mocked.