DON'T HAVE A COW, OR A LAMB, OR A PIG . . .

Wednesday, October 25, 1995
By Howard Rosenberg

Animal rights supporters are still euphoric about Lisa Simpson's conversion to vegetarianism in front of more than 14 million television viewers.

It happened on the Oct. 15, 1995 episode of "The Simpsons" when precocious Lisa, always her family's moral beacon on the Fox comedy, militantly swore off eating meat after relating the lamb chops on her dinner plate to a cute, huggable lamb that licked her at a petting zoo. "What's the difference between this lamb and the one that kissed me?" she asked.

Written by David S. Cohen, the episode itself gave the answer, artfully weaving into its plot a slaughterhouse sequence, a pitch for tofu hot dogs and voice-over cartoon cameos by animal rights veterans Paul and Linda McCartney. "Rock stars," moaned Homer Simpson. "Is there anything they don't know?"

TV comedies are usually at their deadliest and clumsiest when lecturing viewers. In this case, however, mounting a veggie soapbox neither cost "The Simpsons" its acute sense of humor nor blunted its appetite for wicked satire. Instead, the episode was a brilliant harmonizing of anti-ignorance mirth and pro-animal message.

Pushing that message one step further, "The Simpsons" also slipped in a good word for vegans, who reject eggs and dairy products as well as meat on ethical grounds.

The connection that Lisa didn't make in the episode, though, is the one between live animals and the leather shoes and other animal goods that likely comprise much of her wardrobe. She no longer eats animals, but she still wears them.

Still, if only all of TV were as enlightened as "The Simpsons" and so eloquently expressed how the planet's culture of violence targets animals as well as humans. Some believe it happens even in the same family. Making that connection, an ad campaign for the Washington Humane Society declares: "The dad who comes home and kicks the dog is probably just warming up."

How the vegetarian episode of
"The Simpsons" came about...

Howard Lyman (x-4th generation cattle rancher "now vegan") travels the world giving lectures to all kinds of people about the benefits of going vegan. One time, he gave a lecture that Lisa Presley attended. After the lecture, she invited him to give a lecture at her house to a small group of friends. When Howard arrived at the Presley house, there were about 15 people and most of them were scraggly looking, especially this one character. He then spoke to the group. At the end of the lecture one guy got up and said to another person "He's full of shit" and then walked out.

The next day Howard gets a call from this same, scraggly guy who said to him that he had spent the entire day in the library researching the facts giiven by Howard and he found out they were all true. This man just happened to be Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons.

Matt Groening then invited Howard Lyman to speak to his writting staff at Fox (which he did). After Howard Lyman's talk with the writting staff of the Simpsons he influenced about half the staff to become vegetarian and the other half of the crew became more open-minded about vegetarianism. Things went on from there and the staff decided, with the influence of Paul & Linda McCartney, to have Lisa Simpson go vegetarian.