Appearance in Popular Culture
The Simpsons episode "Catch 'Em If You Can", aired 25 April 2004, alluded to the snob appeal of The Economist in an exchange between Homer and Marge Simpson while they are travelling first-class aboard an airplane:
Homer: "Look at me, I'm reading The Economist! Did you know Indonesia is at a crossroads?"
Marge: "No!"
Homer: "It is!"
Four days later, The Economist alluded to the quote, and published an article about Indonesia referring to the "crossroads". The title of the issue was "Indonesia's Gambit", as in The Simpsons' episode. About seven months later, The Economist ran a cover headline reading "Indonesia at a Crossroads." In April 2009, The Economist published an article on Indonesian democracy with the title "Beyond the crossroads". The show returned to the joke in a much later episode, "Million Dollar Maybe". In return for a favour Homer offers another character, Barney Gumble, the contents of a tree containing his stash of "adult magazines". These turn out to be issues of The Economist, one of which features the headline "New challenges for Indonesia".
In 2006, Indian actor Abhishek Bachchan starred in a Motorola KRZR advertisement where one flight attendant asked if he wanted anything to read. He said "The Economist, please", which resulted in the young lady sitting next to him rolling her eyes and his mirror image called him a "fraud". He settles for Stardust instead.
Read more about this topic: The Economist
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, appearance, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“Most lovers ... picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else—their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)