The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum released a study that more Americans can name the 5 members of TV’s Simpsons family than can name the 5 rights enumerated in the First Amendment: Americans’ Awareness of First Amendment Freedoms
The five essential freedoms contained in the First Amendment are freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.… Although 72% were able to name at least one of these rights correctly, this fell to only 28% who could name two or more, only 8% who could name three or more, only 2 percent who could name four or five. Remarkably, only one person of the 1,000 interviewed was able to correctly name all five freedoms.
Although unaided recall of the five First Amendment freedoms drops off quickly after freedom of speech, this is not the case for some aspects of popular culture. The TV cartoon show “The Simpsons” has five main characters that Americans remember much more readily. While only one in a thousand were able to name
all five freedoms contained in the First Amendment, one out of five Americans can name all five of the Simpson characters.
The Chicago Tribune interviewed Columbia Law Prof. Michael Dorf for its report on the survey: About those 1st Amendment rights, Doh!: “‘It’s obvious what should happen here,’ Dorf said. The Constitution ‘should be featured in an episode of `The Simpsons.””
While The Simpsons may have never done an episode focusing on the right to petition the Government for greivances, any discussion of the show and Constitutional Law together has to mention The Amendment Song (From episode 3F16, “The Day the Violence Died”):
I’m an amendment-to-be, yes an amendment-to-be,
And I’m hoping that they’ll ratify me.
There’s a lot of flag-burners,
Who have got too much freedom,
I want to make it legal
For policemen to beat’em.
‘Cause there’s limits to our liberties,
At least I hope and pray that there are,
‘Cause those liberal freaks go too far.
Audio: [The Amendment Song][4] (2.1 MB .M4A)
(via [How Appealing][5])
[4]: www.iptablog.org/podcast/1… The Day The Violence Died (Medley).m4a [5]: http://legalaffairs.org/howappealing/030106.html#011732
