Re:Yea But (Score 5, Insightful)

While The Simpson's try to make the show as friendly to the whole country as possible (and they enjoy keeping people guessing...) Matt Groening got his start writing Life is hell for the Oregonian newspaper. He went to The evergreen State College in Olympia. A bunch of the Streets in Northwest Portland's Alphabet district share names with Characters (Lovejoy, Flanders etc), The founder of Eugene (shares the freeway with Springfield) is named Eugene Skinner, There's a power plant Just north of the Oregon Border...There's a super Cheesy Theme park in between Springfield and Salem. None of these things really come up in the comparisons I read, mostly because those trying to find Springfield are too busy studying physical geography instead of the mental imagery floating around in the creator's head. Granted, to say that the Northwest is the soul influence not only carries that type of Statehood Narcissism that is usually reserved for SEC football college towns, it'd be downright stupid. He got inspirations all over the place. But to tell me that Groening didn't get the lion share of his ideas from the Northwest would be looking over what I think is the obvious. Springfield sits in Oregon.