You know, I haven't watched The Simpsons in a while, but I was channel surfing last night and spotted Lisa Simpson with a genealogy book on her desk (yeah, they showed the g word on TV -- in a cartoon, no less!).
Of course, I had to see what she was up to and it turned out that she had to do a presentation about one of her ancestors. I didn't catch all of it, but for whatever reason, she decided to create a fictional Native American ancestor and snagged the brand name from the nearby microwave as her tribal affiliation. So the Simpsons were now of Hitachi descent. Problem is -- her presentation was so good that she wound up having to present elsewhere, get interviewed, and so forth . . . you get the idea. Probably not an inaccurate portrayal of how and why so many families today claim to be descended from Cherokee princesses.
At any rate, the episode is too new to be online anywhere. In fact, all I was able to find was this description from a web page with upcoming episodes, but I'm going to keep an eye out because I think most genealogists would get a kick out of it.
Comments (2)
Meagan, I love that episode!
Lisa fabricated the story because she was afraid a bad grade would ruin her chances of attending an ivy league college. I talked about it on Randy's Genea Musings blog back in June. He was wondering if there had ever been a movie or TV character who was a genealogist.
http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/2007/06/have-genealogists-been-characters-in.html
You can also read a summary of the entire episode on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_Girl
Posted by Sally J. | July 23, 2007 8:51 PM
Posted on July 23, 2007 20:51
Hi Sally,
Yeah, you're right! I see now that it first ran back in February:
http://www.thesimpsons.com/episode_guide/1812.htm
Unfortunately, the only image I could find associated with it was about Bart. I'd love to have a still of Lisa with her books, too! Thanks for bringing me up to date!
Take care,
Megan
Posted by Megan | July 23, 2007 9:05 PM
Posted on July 23, 2007 21:05