Springfield subversives

“The Simpsons” is almost certainly the most subversive show in the history of television (“The real first family,” Feb. 16), and the way in which the mainstream media have celebrated it brought to my mind a passage from James Agee’s introduction to “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” in which he implores the reader not to view his work as “art”:

“Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor.... Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation has been beaten again, and is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding.”

If the philosophy behind “The Simpsons” was as widely understood as the show is loved, we’d have a revolution on our hands.

John Tecumseh

Santa Monica