Mussolini was such a fag.

Actually called a fasces in that context (although i think "faggot" may be an Early English corruption of that), and these types of jokes are why i stopped watching the simpsons after the 8th season

Yeah, it's weird that they could get away with a double entendre like that on a show that's still marketed towards kids, but then again it was 1996 (7) and homosexuality was still, unfortunately, funny and foreign to a large population.

This episode aired in 2006, and while it's not a great joke, I'd say it's more to show how out of touch Martin is than how funny homosexuality is.

The fasces goes back a lot, lot longer than Mussolini. The emperor of Rome was traditionally flanked by them when performing official business at the Senate, and goes back to an even older pagan symbol likely from the Etruscans. "Fascism" is also not unilaterally evil or sinister, there have been benevolent dictators, but they are few and far between (arguably, Claudius and Augustus were pretty benevolent, and one could also argue on behalf of Napoleon, which I personally would).

FASCISM: THE MORE YOU KNOW!

And it even crosses cultures, the Mongols (yes yes, post Roman but very far away) also used the symbol of the bundled sticks or arrows for similar reasons denoting strength when moving as one.

Oh. I think it was a combination of BVS's comment and my unique ability to read things backwards that made me think this was S08. I could imagine a similar situation where Mr. Burns finds a mouth harp and refers to it as a "Jew's Harp" played for laughs, but this is a little much.

Rumour has it Alexander the Great had a lot of faggots hanging around him as well.

You're right, this joke is symptomatic of the problems plaguing New Simpsons. Martin is using an old English corruption instead of using the original Latin word, *despite the fact its already been established that Martin studies and understands Latin!!!* As a know-it-all and prissy showoff, Martin should have preferred "fasces" to "faggot" in this situation, even though the former word is far less common than the latter.

And you can't say a wizard did it, either. This is just bad writing stemming from inconsistent characterization.

More than anything else, that's why The Simpsons suck now. They went from mostly character based humor to mostly WACKY RANDOM THINGS humor.

The old Simpsons had wacky random gags, but less often and it felt like they went through an editing process where the ones that didn't work were thrown out and the ones that did were polished. New Simpsons is just constantly shotgunning every random wacky idea straight to the script.

Your number two for Superman is the entire point of a classic superman story, 'Must THere Be a Superman?'

And a ton of old stories were #1's and #3's -- Superman would get a letter from a kid with a peculiar problem and try to help the kid out.

Once he got a letter from a young blind girl's parents, saying that she was angry because she kept hearing tall tales about this "Superman" guy and it would cheer her up to have proof she wasn't being lied to. So he showed up and tried to use his powers to prove they were real, but she was a born skeptic and had an alternate explanation for everything he did. Eventually he realized that her blindness was being caused by a tiny sliver of glass from a car accident, so he studied up on brain surgery and got the sliver out. When she woke up and could see again, he said to her, "that proof enough for you, bitch?" Okay, maybe that last part didn't happen, but the rest did, and damn if it didn't make for an all right story in its essentials.

FASCISM? Highly dubious!

What're you cackling at, Crocy? Too much pie, that's your problem!