New answers tagged the-simpsons
8
President Carter has a reputation similar to Neville Chamberlain's, but milder. His critics dislike him not so much for what he did, but for what he failed to do. Even though he arguably didn't cause it, his presidency is practically synonymous with the stagflation, energy crisis, and economic malaise of the 1970s. Boycotting the Olympics is a fairly tame ...
10
He was too nice. Far too nice, especially for a President (he was elected after Watergate).
Carter was a born-again Christian. He famously confessed in a Playboy interview that he sometimes had "lust in his heart". The guy was a total Flanders. Both of them are just the worst.
He was also, in 1993 when the episode aired, known as the best ex-president. ...
22
This is addressed in the commentary audio track of the DVD for this episode.
The other answers are correct that history's greatest monster is a pretty extreme assessment of Jimmy Carter, so much so that it's a joke on its own (as it would be for most people that might have been chosen for the bit). Whatever you think of the man, in any context, it's ...
56
The joke is that Carter is a soft-spoken, genteel man, and thus calling him "history's greatest monster" is a ridiculous exaggeration.
It is possibly also a criticism of Republican propaganda to portray Democratic presidents as "monsters" for utterly ridiculous reasons.
-3
No presidency is perfect and the Simpsons (as with all comedy) exaggerates most of the things about the target of their joke.
But on President Carter himself he has often been criticized for his performance of the Iran hostage crisis. This caused his popularity to drop heavily and made him lose the 1980 presidential election.
But besides that there is ...
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