1) Are you disillusioned?
2) Disappointed?
3) Disgusted?
4) Disagreeably damp and jittery?
5) Are you worried you might have accidentally minimized your potential?
6) Are you trapped in a loveless cubicle?
7) Do you question authority when authority is out of earshot?
8) Does this fill you with shame and guilt and cheese puffs?

If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you are probably a fan of Matt Groening. If you answered no, you are also probably a fan of Matt Groening. Bush family aside, who is not a fan of Matt Groening? Ever since his syndicated comic strip "Life in Hell" -- that series of nihilistic but cuddly dispatches from the epicenter of gloom -- first appeared in 1980, Groening has been raising the dampened spirits of the fashionably alienated by dunking Binky, his rabbity, buck-toothed proxy, into a weekly bog of self-pity, anxiety and existential despair. As Flaubert might have said, "Binky, c'est tout le monde." But mainly, he is Matt Groening.

Or rather, he is the struggling, penurious pre-"Simpsons" Matt Groening. "I judge my life by how miserable it used to be," Groening told an interviewer last year, speaking of his early days as a lowly alternative cartoonist. "If I could pay my rent, I was deliriously happy. Now I'm deliriously happy all the time."

	Print story E-mail story

But before delirium set in, Groening spun a lingering bad mood and an "accidental" cartooning career into a billion-dollar print, broadcast, merchandising and licensing empire. Some seven years after Binky and his one-eared son, Bongo, first began delving into their epic disaffection, and the heroically insecure (but enterprising) gay twins Akbar and Jeff opened the first of their reprobate money-making "huts," "The Simpsons," the first animated series to hit prime time in 20 years, made its television debut.

His mission, Groening has said, was to create a sofa-centric sitcom about a typical American family and turn it upside down in retaliation for all the bad TV he watched as a kid. The message? "That your moral authorities don't always have your best interests in mind," he told Mother Jones magazine. "Teachers, principals, clergymen, politicians -- for the Simpsons, they're all goofballs, and I think that's a great message for kids." (Statements like these, of course, set off fits of right-wing apoplexy, much to the amusement and delight of everyone else. George Bush once famously regaled the nation with the suggestion that American families should aspire to be "more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons," prompting Bart to retort, "But we're just like the Waltons -- we're both praying for an end to the depression.")

"The Simpsons" premiered in 1990, and eventually became the most popular, most widely broadcast and one of the longest-running shows in television history. "The Simpsons" has earned Fox's parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., well over a billion dollars, and its role in the network's growth has been incalculable. The show is watched by more than 60 million people weekly in more than 60 countries around the world -- beating out even the lowest-common-denominator friendly "Baywatch" as the world's most-watched show.

"Simpsons" executive producer Mike Scully, who took over as show runner, or head writer, in 1996, has said that in order to write for "The Simpsons," a writer must have "a healthy disrespect for everything Americans hold dear." And judging from the success of "The Simpsons," what Americans hold most dear is disrespect itself. Nowadays, you can't throw a rock at a TV set without hitting an irreverent animated social satire. But for a few brief moments in the early '90s, the idea that anything "alternative" could suddenly overtake the mainstream was still surprising. In 1991, the newly wealthy Groening still seemed to struggle with the central paradox of his career. "I'm a fan of counterculture -- of which there is very little right now," he told Fortune magazine. "What's happened is that mainstream culture has gotten so good at marketing pseudo-hipness that it overwhelms other choices that are out there."

Ten years later, at the age of 46, Groening is responsible for a comic strip syndicated in 250 newspapers, more than 25 books, two prime-time animated series and untold containers full of valuable merchandise. And for a guy whose career has been dedicated to skewering television, crass commercialism, "evil billionaire tyrants" (how boss Rupert Murdoch described himself in a cameo on "The Simpsons") and brainless consumers, Groening sure does love his merchandise. Images of "The Simpsons" have been licensed to sell everything from T-shirts to toys to potato chips to cheese, suggesting that mainstream culture has gotten pretty good at marketing genuine hipness as well.

Click here to send a Brilliant Careers postcard, visit the Brilliant Career archives or check out audio and video highlights.