"The Simpsons" on Dealey Plaza

Listening last night to an interview with Al Jean of "The Simpsons" production staff, in which he talked about the early days of the show, reminded me of an interview I did back in 1993 with David Mirkin, who was then the show runner or somesuch person. I asked him for an example of something they'd cut from the show for taste reasons.

He cited the "Rosebud" episode -- one of the all-time great episodes, in which Monty Burns is Charles Foster Kane. There's a sequence in the episode in which ... well, here's the Wikipedia narrative:

As a child, Burns lived with his family and cherished his teddy bear Bobo. But he drops Bobo in the snow when he leaves to live with a "twisted, loveless billionaire". His father shouts after him "Wait, you've forgot your bear! A symbol of your lost youth and innocence!" but he goes unnoticed and all his parents had left after that was his little brother George. Bobo lies in the snow until the spring, when a thaw washes him downriver to New York. There, he is picked up by Charles Lindbergh and flown across the Atlantic Ocean.

Upon arrival in Paris, Lindbergh tosses the bear out the window, where it is caught by a young Adolf Hitler. In 1945, in his Führerbunker in Berlin, Germany, Hitler blames Bobo for losing (and possibly causing) World War II and tosses him away. In the next scene, Bobo lies onboard the submarine Nautilus headed for the North Pole. He becomes encased in a block of ice until picked up by an ice-gathering expedition. The bag of ice with him in it is sent to Apu's Kwik-E-Mart in Springfield. Bart Simpson buys the bag of ice, finds Bobo and, after remarking "It's a teddy bear! Ugh gross, its probably diseased or something!" gives it to Maggie to play with.

Burns discovers that Maggie has the bear and goes to incredible lengths to get it back, including interrupting all TV shows and cutting off the beer supply to Springfield, in order to get Homer to give it back.

Mirkin said that in the sequence in which Bobo travels throughout history, causing misfortune, there was a clip in which Bobo was seated on a shelf by a window in the Texas Book Depository. Lee Harvey Oswald stood inside the room, aiming his rifle at some sort of pesky varmint. Bobo fell off the shelf at just the wrong moment, striking the gun barrel as Oswald fired, forcing the barrel down, and the shot out the window. I believe Oswald said, "D'oh!"

That never made broadcast. I think you can see why.