Dirty Laundry

Dirty Laundry is a The Simpsons Summer Shindig comic story featured in.

Plot
Lisa tells Marge that they would save 6% of their electricity consumption if they did not use the dryer, so Marge starts to start hang clothes outdoors on a washing line. But no-one in the neighborhood is happy for people to hang clothes outdoors, because it violates the rules the neighborhood association has put together. Mr. Norman, the chairman of the neighborhood association, sends a letter to Marge where he asks her to take down the clothes because its an eyesore.

Lisa thinks its nonsense and asks Marge when the next meeting of the association is, because she can maybe find an idea that can prove that there isn't an eyesore by hanging up clothes. Bart asks her to not dry Homer's underwear outdoors anymore. Lisa begins to reading art books. She finds that Christo's Gates in New York were beautiful but the art does not contain laundry. Bart comes over and tells Lisa that he doesn't understand how she is reading something unrelated to school, she then tells Bart that she is looking for a work of art consisting of hanging clothes and asks Bart to take a look in the book, because he might like it. Bart takes a look in the book and picks out a picture and tells Lisa that it can't be art. Lisa tells Bart that he is looking at one of Rene Magritte's pictures, a surrealist. The picture looks smiling to hanging laundry but it's too much of a stretch. Bart then points to a picture of a pipe that has the text "This is not a pipe" below it. Lisa tells him that it is a paradox, an image of pipe but it is a painting, not a pipe. Lisa asks Bart to continue looking in the book if he finds something that makes laundry look pretty.

At the next homeowner association meeting, the neighbors are complaining over Marge's washing line as its an eyesore. Ned says that Lisa has something to tell them that can get them to continue to hanging clothes. Lisa tells everyone that many people associate clothes drying in the breeze with low-income families who can not afford machines, but people have dried their clothes in nature for millennia and is reminiscent of Christo's famous gate which gives a similar effect. Mr. Norman points out, that you can't call Marge's bras for an art. Bart gets an idea when he draws a picture of Marge's bra that Norman has taken with the text This is not a bra and he tells to Norman he has made a visual paradox a la Magritte. Norman tells him that this is not art, it's a weak attempt by a child to turn a sow's ear into silk purse and this is nothing more than a dirty disgusting eyesore of a bra. Marge points out then that the bra is clean and the women from Springfield get angry. They ask Norman what is wrong with the bras and remember that Norman was mad when they burned them and now he did not want them to air dry them. Ned asks the association if they can vote to let the Simpsons dry clothes outdoors, so long they didn't dry Homer's underwear and all beside Norman accepts it. Lisa thanks Bart and he tells her that there was nothing in French.

Reprints
Dirty Laundry