Oh god:

Jay Kogen: One time, I remember, [Swartzwelder] bought a painting that Hitler had painted. I was like, “Really? You want to buy a Hitler painting?” But he loved historic artifacts.

If you want the essentials without reading the book, Ortved wrote a piece with the same thesis for Vanity Fair. I just forgot it while I was writing my review. You do miss out on a lot of gossip and bad blood that really help sell that Groening was more of a deistic creator who helped set the machine in motion but didn't interfere with it.

Another thing I forgot is that David Silverman really is a champ and basically helped to show not to explode during the production of the first season. He was like one of the three creative workers on Klasky-Csupo back when the company was hired by Gracie Films or Fox, can't remember which one.

Thing is some of his scripts are really stealthy. Like he wrote some pretty well done pro-environmentalism shows and yet the rumour is that he thinks that the Amazon jungle was doing just fine. He also has this reputation of being a straight joke man, not good at plotting or writing the more emotional episodes but actually wrote some of the best romantic comedy episodes.

One thing the book does say about John is that the content in Itchy & Scratchy segments were really his doing though I think the general concept was cooked up by Sam Simon. That really wasn't the impression that the fandom had of John's work, I don't think it was usual to tie him with slapstick or gore.

I looked up who John Swartzwelder is and god that episodes like The Old Man and the Lisa were written sarcastically by a hardcore conservative explains so much

yo this is a good post thanks for writing it up. I go back to the simpsons sometimes just so I can say "yea, it's still really good" but yea how the episodes got written is a real open question that a lot of people keep quiet about so that's an interesting subject