The season 19 episode “E Pluribus Wiggum” induced controversy in Argentina prior to its broadcast there. The controversy is over a comment by Carl Carlson, who says, “I might actually go for some type of navy dictator, like Juan Perón. When he ‘disappeared’ you, you stayed ‘disappeared!'”. Some reacted negatively to Lenny’s response to Carl’s comment: “Plus, his wife was Madonna”, a reference to the movie Evita, the place Madonna performed Eva Perón. Carl’s comment is a reference to the Dirty War, a interval of army dictatorship during which as many as 30,000 political dissidents disappeared. The season 7 episode “Much Apu About Nothing” follows the immigration debate as Mayor Quimby blames larger taxes on unlawful immigrants, and town undergoes a period of xenophobia focusing on international residents. The season 20 episode “Coming to Homerica” revisits the immigration debate, with the plot following the residents of Springfield enlisting in a border patrol group and building a border barrier to deny entry to a Norwegian-American community.
GLAAD calling the episode “a shining example of how to bring intelligent, fair and humorous representations of our neighborhood onto television”. The episode portrays the drug as beneficial to Homer and demonstrates methods in which it improves his life, although he additionally suffers from short-term memory loss and chooses to not continue use of the drug to set an instance for his children. Ratjen later competed and set a world record for the ladies’s excessive bounce at the 1938 European Championships before checks by the German police concluded that Ratjen was a man. These include a reference to Mao Zedong as “just a little angel that killed 50 million individuals”, a scene set up to resemble the Tank Man photograph, and a plaque stating “Tien An Men Square: On this site, in 1989, nothing occurred” in reference to the Chinese government’s censorship of the topic. The episode is vital of the Chinese authorities, and it makes multiple references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Within the season four episode “Homer’s Triple Bypass”, Homer attempts to defraud a medical insurance provider by giving a false report of his medical history, but he has a coronary heart assault whereas doing so. The season 8 episode “Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment” addresses prohibition of alcohol.
Excessive alcohol consumption is typically portrayed as a source of comedy on the present, though some episodes portray the destructive elements of alcoholism. Several episodes concern prescription medication. Homer and Barney seek therapy for their alcoholism in the season 4 episode “Duffless” and the season eleven episode “Days of Wine and D’oh’ses”, respectively, in which alcoholism is treated as a serious concern. The heaviest drinkers among the characters, Homer Simpson and Barney Gumble, are typically portrayed as worse off resulting from their extreme alcohol consumption. Within the season four episode “Mr. Plow”, it is advised that Homer brought about important hurt to Barney by introducing him to beer. It was the main focus of the season 13 episode “Weekend at Burnsie’s”, by which Homer is prescribed medical cannabis. Medication of kids is the primary focus of the season 11 episode “Brother’s Little Helper”, during which Bart is made to go on a new ADHD medicine in opposition to his needs. In the season two episode “Bart Gets Hit by a Car”, both Mr. Burns and the Simpsons freely make fraudulent claims in courtroom after Burns hits Bart Simpson along with his automobile. The city calls for the change after Bart Simpson partakes in underage drinking, but it’s portrayed as a failure that makes alcohol more extensively obtainable by the black market.
The Simpsons features characters partaking in non-beneficial health behaviors associated to medicine, corresponding to smoking cigarettes and excessive alcohol consumption. The season sixteen episode “Midnight Rx” features characters touring to Winnipeg to smuggle prescription drugs into the United States. It demonstrates how the rhetoric and possible deportation affects Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a personality revealed in this episode to be in the United States on an expired visa. The character Waylon Smithers was presumed to be gay for much of the present’s run and got here out within the season 27 episode “The Burns Cage”, wherein he briefly dates Julio. The previous features Homer’s time dwelling with gay roommates, whereas the latter centered on the proper for homosexuals to get married and included Marge’s sister Patty coming out as a lesbian. Marge’s older twin sisters. Smithers is proven to have a passionate and deep love for Mr. Burns; as late as 2007, during the present’s 18th season, Matt Groening and executive producer James L. Brooks wrote in an interview that Smithers, being targeted on one explicit particular person, was not homosexual, but “Burns-sexual”. Creator Matt Groening and voice actress Yeardley Smith both apologized for the tone of the episode.