Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington

"Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington" is the fourteenth episode of Season 14.
==Summary==
When the airlines change flight paths over their house, the Simpsons start to get annoyed. After Bart sees a "Krusty the Clown Show" advertisement, he thinks Krusty should run for Congress, (after the old Congressman Horace Wilcox passes away) and pass a bill to reroute the air traffic.
==Synopsis==
The Simpsons are watching an episode of "The Three Stooges", when the house begins to shake. Then they discover an airplane was flying dangerously close to their house; then they agree that the air traffic had been redirected. Homer and Marge complain to an airport official, who tells them that the airplanes were rerouted away from nature reserves, to help protect the animals. But they were really redirected by Mayor Quimby, so he can have peace when he is with his girlfriends, which he soon regrets when he finds out that Miss Springfield has an annoying voice. While Marge tries to suggest a method where both the family and the animals can be happy but the official just becomes offended. He then bluntly tells them to learn to live with it and that the government's decision is final.
The family lives with the noise for the next three months without sleep (with Lisa even developing the ability to identify exactly which flights are about to fly overhead as they do due to the trauma of being directly underneath air traffic), but then they choose of not coping anymore. They then plan to move, and unsuccessfully try to sell the house to Apu and Manjula and Ralph Wiggum, who doesn't even deem the house worth a carton of chocolate milk. Then Homer and Marge complain to their local congressman, Horace Wilcox. Horace decides that he wants to help them, but unfortunately, he suffers a heart attack and passes away. While watching Krusty the Clown, Bart gets the idea, for Krusty to run for Congress. The next day, Bart visits Krusty and asks him to run for Congress. Krusty seems reluctant at first, but he soon likes to the idea, when he realizes that he could solve the problems that the government has plagued him with, such as taxes and immigration of his pet monkey. At the Republicans’ meeting, he nominates himself as a candidate for Congress. The other members are supportive and they agree with him.
Krusty’s campaign has a very bad start. He says a Spanish phrase at a Latino American group that he doesn't realize translates to "I'm going to puke onto your mother's grave" until AFTER stating it, as well as includes offensive jokes in his speech for a Women's group. Things get to its worse part when his opponent, John Armstrong, shows a sketch from Krusty’s show (from 1998) making fun of the UN as well as the French (French stench), Jamaicans (Hum-drums), and San Francisco's gay community. Desperate to have Krusty win the election, as well as be on the winning side for one, Lisa helps Krusty turn his campaign around by having him communicate with regular families and citizens, in a bid to get them to vote for him. Krusty’s popularity soars and with the assistance of biased republican media he wins the election.
After taking the oath, he tries to bring up the topic of the air traffic over Evergreen Terrace. However, none of the other congressmen listen to him, and tell him that new congressman aren't very important. Later, the Simpsons find Krusty in a bar, and he is getting drunk. Krusty feels that he has failed them, but they convince him to stand up for his beliefs. This encouraged him, but he goes to an empty room.
With the janitor's help (who is implied to be former Minnesota senator and United States Vice President Walter Mondale), they blackmail a key congressman with a videotape, which has footage of him abusing the free mail policy. Homer helps by getting a southern congressman drunk. Finally, during a session in Congress, the janitor and Lisa, with Homer’s drunken diversion, place the Air Traffic Bill under a bill giving orphans American flags. When the bill comes up for discussion, the blackmailed congressman immediately consents, and Congressman Beauregard, in a drunken stupor, consents to the bill. The legislation is then passed, and Krusty celebrates.
== Controversy ==
At one point during the episode, the family is watching Krusty and his opponent debate on the Fox News Channel, which showed several headlines in its news ticker that parodied the right-leaning network's political views. Among the headlines in the news ticker were "Pointless news crawls up 37 percent," "Do Democrats cause cancer? Find out at foxnews.com," "Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer," "Dow down 5,000 points," "Study: 92 percent of Democrats are gay," "JFK posthumously joins Republican Party," and "Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple."
Several months after the episode originally aired, Matt Groening claimed that Fox News, the corporate sister to the Fox Broadcasting Company that airs the show, threatened to sue Groening, but opted against "suing itself". Groening mentioned that while they got away with the joke, they were no longer allowed to parody news tickers on the show. Despite that, the show would still parody Fox News on several occasions afterward, as well as Family Guy parodying Fox News as part of its main plot in 2009 with the episode "Fox-y Lady". The Dow Jones & Company, which owned the Dow Jones Industrial Average that was parodied in the news ticker, would be purchased by News Corporation in 2007 and would be a corporate sister to Fox until the 2013 split between the new News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, which in turn would be further split with the acquisition of the film and television assets of 21st Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company on March 20, 2019, with Fox News Channel now being owned by the Fox Corporation.
== Behind the Laughter ==
=== Reception ===
The episode was met with mixed reviews
== Citations ==
fr:Le Député Krusty
pl:Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington
pt:Krusty vai a Washington
Category:Krusty the Clown Episodes
Category:Politics-themed episodes
Category:Work-themed Episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Episodes named after previous episodes
Category:Episodes on DVD
Category:Controversial episodes
Category:Written by John Swartzwelder
Category:Directed by Lance Kramer
Category:Episodes with alternate end credits
Category:Sequels
Category:Death Episodes
Category:Travel episodes
Category:Fat Tony episodes
Category:Episodes where Bumblebee Man speaks English
Category:Highly Rated Episodes
Category:Episodes with mixed reviews
Category:Episodes named after a film or TV Show
Category:Episodes where Fat Tony cries
Category:Episodes when a character blows his/her nose