Do'h! "Simpsons" creator way off

Arts editor Bill Forman interviews Matt Groening for a Culture cover feature on the prime-time series debut of The Simpsons. "If you're interested in communicating creative ideas in television, animation is the last place you'd want to go," says the cartoonist of Life in Hell, then carried by Isthmus. "It's underpaid, it has no respect, it's considered a novelty kiddie medium, and the entire history of it is so depressing that I think anybody with any kind of self-esteem would choose another field." What a pessimist! The Simpsons becomes a sustained ratings and merchandising juggernaut, introducing countless idioms into the lexicon, winning dozens of Emmy Awards, surpassing Gunsmoke as the longest-running prime-time U.S. entertainment series and marking its 20th anniversary this year with the release of a commemorative set of first-class U.S. postage stamps.