My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood.
In New York, after that famous home run, they expected me to be up there every year. That homer raised me to a high level, with the top guys in the game.
Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Plato, and Cicero, just to name a few, all lived in pagan societies. Some of the greatest political and military leaders of all time, such as Alexander the Great, Pericles of Athens, Hannibal of Carthage, and Julius Caesar of Rome, were all pagans, or else living in a pagan society.
It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches!
One of my favorite episodes was the one in which Homer grew hair. That was a very unique episode, since there was a gay secretary, but that wasn't even the issue of the show-the issue was Homer's image changing because he had hair.
To many, Homer may appear lazy and a loser, but he's just much misguided. He's boorish, sure, but well meaning and, I guess, the one thing we have in common is the pursuit of lousy diets.
The Democratic party, respective to health care, is like a person who was sent into the store to purchase a gallon of milk and some butter for the evening's meal and instead walked out with a 'Gladiator' DVD, a can of Easy Cheese, and some Homer Simpson house slippers because how funny are they?
I can't measure up to Homer. His composition has survived for nearly three millennia and remains the world's most beautiful and mournful depiction of war. But the story of the Trojan War does not belong to Homer. The characters he employs were legendary long before he was born.