While it now seems fairly tame and innocent in our post-South-Park world, The Simpsons—I recall as a child of the 90s—was genuinely scandalous and shocking to middle-aged and older adults in the 1990s. Why was that? I grasp the generational divide in taste, but not the moral outrage it provoked.

The Simpsons debuted on the FOX channel in the US in December 1989 (after being featured in shorts in the Tracy Ullman Show). One early review of the show in the New York Times in February 1990 gives something of a flavour of how the show was initially taken:

The show can fall flat. Last Sunday's episode about a family camping trip started off promisingly...but soon became merely outlandish, with Homer covered in pond slime and being mistaken for Big Foot. There is, admittedly, a fine line between being hilariously perceptive and just plain, even objectionably, silly. While habitually teetering on that line, ''The Simpsons'' has shown a remarkable ability to come down on the right side most of the time.

Ah, the days when Homer Simpson just being covered in pond slime was notably outlandish.

Knowing the Simpsons from the perspective of 2021, where the show is an institution, it's important to point out that, in 1990/1991, The Simpsons was not the show we know today:

Young Bart, who is more like his dad than either of them wants to concede, is the classic cutup and goof-off, addicted to pranks when he's not terrifying pedestrians with his skateboard. Bart's spike haircut suggests he has been profoundly influenced by Jughead in the old ''Archie'' comic books. Convinced that he was born to entertain, Bart winds up as the centerpiece of most episodes.

In other words, it was initially a show about Bart, which delighted in his rebellious - delinquent - behaviour. To the extent that there was a concern amongst older people about The Simpsons, this is the nub of it: to their eyes, it was a show about a brat. The biggest catchphrase of the Simpsons, at this point, was "don't have a cow, man" - or maybe "eat my shorts"? Both of them, in any case, were said while Bart was exultant at the success of a prank. At this point, the cult of Homer and his big catchphrases - "d'oh!" - was still a while off.

The New York Times reviewer spends much of the review chronicling Bart's exploits:

One had Bart inadvertently bloodying the nose of the school bully, Nelson, who had stomped on the cupcakes that Bart's kid sister, Lisa, was taking to her teacher. Pursued by Nelson, Bart cried to his parents, ''I paid the inevitable price for helping out my kid sister,'' whom he considered just a soppy teacher's pet anyway. Dad's advice: ''Fight dirty. Remember the fight Grandpa put up when they put him in the home?''

Which is to say that earliest couple of seasons of the Simpsons very much centre Bart, a character who is perceived as a brat. Homer was not yet the lovable doofus - instead he was often an angry, slightly scary father, prone to outbreaks of violence.

By about August 1990, The Simpsons seemed ubiquitous, according to the Times. In an article about Wall Street, Bart Simpson t-shirts are used as colour:

The one thing bothering Mr. Neimark is even more pedestrian: the proliferation of street peddlers outside the store selling inexpensive Chanel, Hard Rock and Bart Simpson T-shirts. As Mr. Neimark put it, ''On famous Fifth Avenue, it looks like Istanbul on a Sunday.''

In a different August 1990 article, Bart Simpson t-shirts are part of a claim that students in this era were apolitical:

On the Berkeley campus, as elsewhere in the nation, the current crop of students is said to be relatively quiescent, uninformed about world affairs, self-absorbed. Even now, when so many adults are obsessed by international events and riveted to the television set, the students here went about their business, poring over course catalogues, soaking up the late summer sun, squealing with pleasure at reunions with friends.

At Sproul Plaza, a sea of people at noontime, Bart Simpson T-shirts were everywhere and ''U.S. Out of Saudi Arabia'' ones seen elsewhere are nowhere to be found.

By October 1990, the Times was profiling Matt Groening, saying that the creator of the show "now finds himself presiding over a full-fledged if unlikely pop-culture phenomenon". In the profile, there is - for the first time in the Times - an acknowledgement of criticism of the show:

From the start, his show has been criticized by education and parent groups - even former United States Secretary of Education William Bennett - largely because of Bart's jaundiced view of schooling and those who provide it. There are reports that principals at some schools have even forbidden pupils to wear their Bart Simpson ''Underachiever and Proud of It, Man'' T-shirts.

''It's the highest compliment, I guess,'' Mr. Groening, clearly amused, said of the complaints. ''I think it comes down to people who lie awake in bed worrying about other people having a good time. There is always somebody around to say, 'Wipe that insolent smirk off your face.'

''Bart is sort of like Groucho Marx, puncturing the pomposity of the situations he is in. I think everybody appreciates that except Margaret Dumont and William Bennett."

In February 1991, you get criticism of the Simpsons in the New York Times from an unexpected quarter:

Steve Alford, the Dallas [Mavericks] guard, on the popular televison series "The Simpsons": "The Simpsons really bug me. Everyone else seems to like them, but I don't. Bart is a brat, Homer is a knucklehead. I can't stand the entire family." Relax, Steve, it's only a cartoon.

And then, in August 1992, during Presidential campaign season, George H. W. Bush was on the re-election trail. According to a contemporaneous Times report:

On what should have been the night of his stately coronation, the President found himself embroiled in a savage war of words with Bart Simpson, the animated parental nightmare on the hit Fox television series.

Mr. Bush fired the first cultural broadside after arriving in Houston on Monday, repeating an earlier plea for an America that looks a lot more "like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons."

Bart Simpson shot back with his own re-run. On tonight's episode of "The Simpsons," the cartoon family was shown watching the real President's insult on their cartoon television, after which Bart responded: "We're just like the Waltons. We're praying for the Depression to end, too."

(This story was repeated several times in news coverage of Bush's 1992 campaign, usually in a way suggesting he was out of touch.)

A review of the Simpsons in September 1992 (in preparation for the start of Season 4 of the show) acknowledged the changes in the show:

..."The Simpsons" first appeared to be only an animated show about a boy named Bart, the kind of irresistible brat whose nonconforming roots go back to Peck's Bad Boy and the Dead End Kids. Gradually, though, it became apparent that this wasn't just another children's show.

The animation is ingenious, filling the screen with far more detail than can be grasped in a single viewing. The scripts are consistently inventive, brimming with pop-culture allusions, satires and parodies.

The show had by this point hit its stride; Seasons 3-8 are widely seen as the show's classic seasons. Here, the show had become more wholesome, largely by focusing less on Bart; when they did focus on Bart, they somewhat diluted the anarchism of his character in earlier seasons. Homer's character trended away from violent angry father and towards doofus.

But by this point, the idea of Bart Simpson epitomised by the t-shirts was well-established in the Zeitgeist. An April 1993 Times article by Laura Mansnerus, titled 'Kids of the 90's: A Bolder Breed' opened with a strong Simpsons-related lede:

GEORGE COHEN, a human-relations specialist in the White Plains, N.Y., School District, calls it the "Bart Simpson syndrome."

Among the secondary-school students in the classrooms where he works, "you're supposed to be irreverent, confrontational, rebellious," Mr. Cohen said..."it's that attitude that drives a lot of us nuts."

Mr. Cohen has plenty of company in describing a tide of truculence -- a healthy skepticism in the best of circumstances, and in the worst, a juvenile nihilism reminiscent of "Lord of the Flies." The change that teachers and administrators talk about is fairly recent, and noted not just by the middle-aged but by those who are too young themselves to remember dress codes and silence-in-the-halls edicts.

Ultimately, argues Mansnerus, 'Bart Simpson syndrome' is indicative of wider changes in society:

"Most observers of family life would agree that there has been a significant erosion of parental authority in the last 15 or 20 years," said Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor who has spent several years on a study involving 10,000 high school students in Wisconsin and California. Teachers are also perceived as less authoritative, Professor Steinberg said. "There's been a blurring of the distinction between being an adolescent and being an adult. You can see this in the similarities between the way kids and adults dress and the teen-agers' discretionary incomes."

While this article perhaps has a touch of 'am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong' to it, it does illustrate where the fear comes from: baby boomer parents and teachers were horrified by Bart Simpson because he was an expression of this perceived erosion of authority amongst the youth.

Banning The Simpsons - a show where Bart prominently calls his father 'Homer' rather than 'Dad', in some ways the ultimate denial of parental authority - from being watched in the household seemed a sensible solution to many parents in this context. I mean, Bart Simpson can say 'underachiever and proud of it' but many parents want to raise achievers or even overachievers, and want to avoid exposing their children to bad influences. The obvious allure of Bart Simpson became perceived as an impediment to successful parenting, so Bart Simpson was banned in many a household (including mine - it took until about 1995-96 before I was allowed to watch it).