Channel 4 has apologised for screening an episode of ‘The Simpsons’ including a song with the lyrics ‘New Orleans, stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile’ just days after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city. The song appears in the episode ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’, in which the residents of Springfield stage a musical version of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. The song about New Orleans features further insults, with lines claiming it is the “home of pirates, drunks and whores” and “tacky over-priced souvenir stores”. A viewer complained to Ofcom about the scheduling of the episode, on September 7 this year. Channel 4 apologised for the scheduling of the episode. It explained to Ofcom that it checked repeat programmes to ensure, among other things, that recent events have not rendered something offensive, which was previously innocent. However, the reference to New Orleans was incidental to the story, rather than a key part of it and was not picked up on in the review process.
SOURCE: Brand Republic