“The kids in TV land are being duped!” squeaked a talking Bart Simpson doll from amid the flood of merchandise and memorabilia as The Simpsons went big in the early 1990s. Packaged in the self-referential, irreverent language that would define the original Simpsons style of satirical humor, the statement also captured one of the series’ main qualities. Suitably conveyed by Bart, as an emblem and role model for the post-MTV generation, The Simpsons emphasized the meaning of media knowledge and ironic distance necessary to navigate an all-encompassing media culture.

Bart, in that sense, functions as the spokesperson for the show's writers as well as for a whole generation of viewers, when the ten-year-old rascal defiantly talks back to those traditionally accepted as social authorities— parents, priests, politicians, police, teachers, the media, you name it. This antiauthoritarian spirit also characterizes a sequence inserted at the last minute as an alternate opening for the 1992 rerun of the Season 3 episode “Stark Raving Dad” (1991). In the added scene, we see an animated TV set framing original footage of George H. W. Bush's 1992 election campaign speech at the National Religious Broadcasters, where Bush argued American families needed to be “a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons!”