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Poster Boys for Perpetual Adolescence

This Rock Volume 18, Number 8   October 2007     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   What Apologists Need to Know about Rhetoric: Lessons from Aristotle By Gregory R. Beabout   Saintly Rhetoric?   The Art of Rhetoric in the Acts of the Apostles   Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation: The Simpsons, the Boomers, and Religion By Robert P. Lockwood   Why Baby Boomers Left the Church . . .   Poster Boys for Perpetual Adolescence   Read All About It: Why Catholics Should Care About the News Media Crisis By Russell Shaw   Tips for the Informed News Consumer   Resources for the Media-Savvy   Let the Children Come to Me: The International Theological Commission Clarifies Limbo By Matthew A. C. Newsome   Hope for Our Simon   An Excerpt from "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized"   Damascus Road Why I Came Back to the Body of Christ By Chris A. DeVolld   By the Book Hell? Yes! (Part I) By Jim Blackburn   Eyes to See Time and Eternity in the Balance By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told Twenty-Six Crosses on a Hill By Matthew E. Bunson   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

The creators behind The Simpsons are all Baby Boomers. Matt Groening, the creator, was born in 1954; "patron saint" James L. Brooks is the senior partner, born in 1940—a tad older, but certainly one of the club.

While Groening and Brooks are the credited public geniuses of The Simpsons, the behind-the-scenes guy has been producer and writer George Meyer. Born in 1956, he joined the show in 1989 and has been with it ever since.

Conventional wisdom says that most comedy writers today are either atheists or ex-Catholics. The Simpsons certainly reflects its fill of former Catholics on the writing staff. Meyer (said to have been the main creative force behind The Simpsons Movie) fits the description perfectly. Born and raised Catholic, Meyer claims to have moved from agnostic to atheist, as staying agnostic seemed "too wimpy."

In a 2000 profile in The New Yorker, Meyer described his Catholic upbringing:

I did feel that I was made to shoulder a lot of burdens that shouldn’t have been mine—such as the frustrations of older women wearing nun costumes. People talk about how horrible it is to be brought up Catholic, and it’s all true. The main thing was that there was no sense of proportion. I would chew a piece of gum at school, and the nun would say, "Jesus is very angry with you about that," and on the wall behind her would be a dying, bleeding guy on a cross. That’s a horrifying image to throw at a little kid. You really could almost think that talking in line, say, was on a par with killing Jesus. (David Owen, "Taking Humor Seriously," March 13, 2000)