Getting some help from Mr. Burns

If being able to cite all five First Amendment rights is the epitome of informed citizenship, then what’s the antithesis of this enlightened state? “The Simpsons.” Or at least that’s the implication of a much-trumpeted recent survey ? one I’ve read about in the Los Angeles Times and AOL News and heard about on NPR.

For those who’ve missed it, an organization called the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum conducted a phone survey of 1,000 people and concluded that Americans are more likely to know Bart and Homer than they are to know that they’re free to worship Bart and Homer, to talk about Bart and Homer and to assemble peaceably in honor of Bart and Homer (which may explain the low turnout at the weekly prayer group I host).

Now, I’m as anti-entertainment as the next intellectual poser. If you ream “American Idol,” mock Dr. Phil, roll your eyes at the national obsession with “Desperate Housewives,” I’m with you. But hands off “The Simpsons.”

Because while a half hour with this cartoon family may not get you any closer to an ‘A’ on your high school civics exam, it certainly will leave you better informed about the English language.

Case in point: For my entire life, I thought you were supposed to kick off a footrace with a call of, “To your marks. Get set. Go!” It took one C. Montgomery Burns, billionaire atom miser and boss of one Homer Simpson, to set me straight in a rerun I saw just the other night.

“Toe your marks!” Burns yells to employees about to race.

Toe? Yes, toe.

According to “Garner’s Modern American Usage,” an actual book I keep on a shelf near my actual bound copy of the United States Constitution, “toe your marks” comes from “track-and-field events in which the contestants were once told to put one foot on the starting line.”

If you didn’t already know it, this is why “toe the line” is spelled the same way. Though I once thought it meant to help others “tow” a line of rope to haul some heavy object, it actually means, “Hey, get up here at the starting line with the rest of us and stop slacking in the back ranks.”

I should note that the “Simpsons” episode from which I nabbed this crucial bit of academic wisdom is one I’ve seen in rerun form over and over and over again without ever hearing the nuance of Burns’ pronunciation until this very last time.

This fact proves beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m not just free to watch three “Simpsons” reruns a night but that I’m intellectually justified in doing so.

And if that doesn’t convince you, consider this: Not 24 hours later, on the very evening of writing this column, a “Simpsons” rerun enlightened the free world with the following words of wisdom.

Chief Wiggum: “Hijinks. That’s a funny word. Three dotted letters in a row.”

Lou the cop: “Is it hyphenated?”

Chief Wiggum: “It used to be. Of course, every generation hyphenates the way it wants to.”

This is education we can all use.

Consider that just two years ago the Associated Press Stylebook insisted that “free-lance” should be hyphenated. But they changed their tune. It’s “freelance,” they now insist.

And though there was once a battle over whether people should write “e-mail” or “email,” the verdict is in. The one with the hyphen won. I bet Wiggum knew that.

So when it comes to learning language, there’s no better way to spend 90 minutes a day five days a week than watching “Simpsons” episodes.

But if you’re bent on learning about our national heritage, founding fathers, principles of democracy and all that stuff ? well, perhaps you really should open a textbook. I’ll even recommend one that I myself have read cover to cover. It was written by Jon Stewart.