Apu Is Back on ‘The Simpsons,’ but Don’t Forget Why He Disappeared

After nearly a decade in cartoon purgatory, “The Simpsons” is resurrecting Apu from the woke graveyard of canceled characters.

“The Simpsons” show, which—let’s be honest—should have been wound down about the time when those now reaching the legal drinking age were born, announced the Indian cartoon character’s return on X with a preview of a Halloween special episode.

Apu is now being voiced by Indian American Sunil Malhotra instead of Hank Azaria, because having the race of the voice actor match a cartoon character means more than anything to terminally race-conscious Hollywood.

I’m not exactly going to give the show producers kudos here. When the woke mob came, they caved. They let a non-issue turn into a big issue, were forced into an apology tour after doing nothing wrong, then sealed the breach after nine years by hiring an Indian actor to dodge further controversy.

There was nothing “racist” about Apu. The only reason he was canceled is because a “comedian,” Hari Kondabolu, released a documentary, “The Problem with Apu” in 2017 comparing the depiction of the character to minstrel shows in the early 20th century.

And in the late 2010s, accusations of racism, no matter how ridiculous or thin their justification, were taken as the most serious thing in the whole wide world. That reality only escalated in 2020 when all American history was deemed as racist, when giant rocks, yes rocks were being removed from college campuses because of the ever-present hysteria.

Looking back, some of the cultural crusades of the Left in the last decade are almost hard to believe. But you had better believe they were real and at times deadly serious. Careers were destroyed. History was erased. America became a more ruthless, less tolerant place in the name of perpetuating “tolerance.”

The Great Awokening represented a totalitarian mindset, a mindset that elite Western institutions were ready, willing, and able to enforce.

Then something happened that they didn’t expect.

President Donald Trump was reelected. The political revolution they thought was complete and irreversible was revealed to be not nearly as all-encompassing as they once thought. It turns out that most Americans loathed what we were becoming.

And so, the great pullback began. Characters like Apu are being tweaked and gingerly trotted out again as if nothing happened, or at least nothing serious.

The furor of the time is now being laughed off as just a little temporary excess, “woke 1” as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently called it.

Those who led and joined the Awokening want us to forget how bad it got and make us believe that it won’t happen again. Surely, it was just a bizarre, hazy dream after all. Much like the last two decades of “The Simpsons,” it never really happened, did it?

Most of all they want to create the fiction that it would have died down naturally, that they all saw the bitter fruits of excess and changed their minds.

Sure, some of what happened was just mindless herd mentality and opportunism.

But the ideology that drove the moblike excess didn’t just go away.

The true believers just lost the power to effectuate their demands. The clever ones rebranded.

The most important thing to remember is that the Great Awokening didn’t go away on its own. It was forcibly derailed by a political counterrevolution that culminated with Trump’s return to office.

That’s my take as we’ve now seen, even in left-wing circles, some canceled characters and historical figures get sheepishly brought back after they were previously obliterated by swarms of fanatical social justice warriors and cowardly institutional elites afraid to stand up against their insane demands.

Some of the canceled are being brought back, not because Hollywood lefties learned to temper themselves, but because it’s now safe to do so.

The spell was lifted by the weight of the American voter and a uniquely gifted American political figure who was able to resist the absurd impulses of the time.

Just as Ronald Reagan made being “liberal” uncool in the ‘80s, Trump made woke cringe in the 2020s.

Democrats now have to talk about “affordability” instead of defunding the police; Hollywood shows soften their preaching and trot out old, beloved characters to appease their shrinking audiences.

But the creed didn’t die. Cultural revolution is still lingering under the surface waiting for political fortunes to change. Its adherents eagerly await going back to imposing their will on our society.

So, what we have is a temporary reprieve, a chance to decide if the madness that metastasized social liberalism and identitarianism brought us will remain a chapter in our history or a new normal. Will we refuse to go back to the insanity or forget it happened and give them license to return to the dark days of 2020?

That remains an open question.

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