After a song lampooning upstate New York aired on The Simpsons, the head of the New York State Fair has invited the show’s writing staff to see the event this summer in order to prove that the region is “not a joke.” While the long-running animated sitcom has lampooned everything from politics to religion to…well…Australia, each new time such a joke is made, some small group within the larger group of those being lampooned doesn’t find it too funny. You can set your watch by it. Syracuse.com, the website of the local newspaper, has run several articles on the joke.
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Among them was a piece by Tim Delaney, the author of Simpsonology: There’s a Little Bit of Springfield in All of Us and a sociology professor and department chair at the State University of New York – Oswego. [Note: This writer lives in upstate New York and attended SUNY Oswego, although I have no personal relationship with Delaney or any local individual involved in this story.] Delaney’s advice for those offended was more or less, “take a number.” He noted a small handful of the dozens of examples of times people have taken The Simpsons too seriously in its 650+ episodes. “The Simpsons parodies have offended many people, regions and even entire nations, and they have survived,” Delaney wrote. “Enjoy the show for what it is — a comedy and not a documentary.”
In the episode, the family heads to Niagara Falls, and along the way, there is what has turned into a locally infamous song. Homer sings (loosely to the tune of the Frank Sinatra song “Theme from New York, New York”), “Start watching Fox News / stop watching your weight / There is no fancy part of it / Upstate New York / They’re fond of their booze / Hot wing sauce is great / I’m going to clog my heart in it / Upstate New York.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, local politicians and small businesses who are in the business of keeping the “civic pride” fires burning are among those still put off by the episode, though — and so the State Fair, which is held in Syracuse every summer, has asked the writing staff to come out and see what Central New York (one of the handful of regions that make up the geographical umbrella term of “Upstate”) is all about. “We want the show’s writers to see the very best of New York, and the Fair is the perfect place to highlight the diversity and vitality of one of the nation’s largest economies. We know it’s just a TV show, we can certainly take a joke and we love The Simpsons, but there’s so much that’s great about the region,” New York State Fair Director Troy Waffner said in a statement, adding that he would provide free admission tickets to The Simpsons writers in a gift basket full of local foods. “We’re attracting high tech industries to Upstate, Utica is the home of the half moon cookie and tomato pie, the star pitcher Patrick Corbin attended Mohawk Valley Community College, and Buffalo has some of the best architecture of any major city in the northeast. We’ll show them a great time.”
Utica is also the home of Springfield School Superintendent Chalmers in-universe, the source of a now-infamous Albany/Steamed Hams joke. The Simpsons writer and executive producer Jonathan Frink grew up near Utica in Whitesboro, and may have even named Moe’s Tavern after a now-defunct business in the Utica-area community of Oriskany. Frink has defended the episode. The Simpsons airs on Sunday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.
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