Happy Bartday
WHEN George Bush Sr, then president, begged Americans not to imitate them, their appeal seemed only to grow. And not just in the United States. At the Edinburgh Festival on August 14th, tickets for a script-reading of “The Simpsons” sold out in an hour. (London shows were scheduled for August 17th and 18th.) The readings are part of worldwide celebrations marking a decade on the air: the antics of the dysfunctional family American parents least want their children to watch recently eclipsed “The Flintstones” as the longest running cartoon show in American television history.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Happy Bartday”
From the August 19th 2000 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Pep Guardiola, football’s greatest coach, is in a bind
A serial winner is learning how to lose
The Economist’s word of the year for 2024
The Greeks knew how to talk about politics and power
What do feta, cucumbers and cottage cheese have in common?
Social media and the internet are changing how people cook and relate to food
Germany’s former chancellor sets out to restore her reputation
But her new memoir is unlikely to change her critics’ minds
The best books of 2024, as chosen by The Economist
Readers will never think the same way again about games, horses and spies
What to read to understand Elon Musk
The world’s richest man was shaped by science fiction