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Homer Simpson is a man of all seasons; Mr. Plow in the winter, an astronaut in the spring, a touring rock and roll sideshow in the summer and daredevil over Springfield Gorge for the fall. Homer has become an icon of the world culture, and his catchphrase of “D’oh!” is now the universally recognized expression of personal ineptitude. We love Homer because he’s the everyman who dares to dream big, speaks directly from his petulant heart and is unafraid to fail spectacularly.

Since the debut of The Simpsons in 1989, much fun has been made of Homer’s questionable intelligence along with his questionable diet and questionable hygiene. And, yes, it’s easy to mock a man who took potato chips into space and deliberately poured coffee over the control board at the ‘nucular’ plant. It’s also easy to dismiss Homer’s occasional flashes of brilliance as mere luck or coincidence rather than the workings of a flexible and dynamic intellect.

Let us now compare Homer’s brain to that of the learned and erudite Sideshow Bob. We all know that Sideshow Bob is well versed in the classics of opera, he dabbles in engineering and politics, and is the masterful conceiver of evil schemes. His dreadlocks and massive feet have stymied all of his lofty dreams and left him bitterly trying, and failing, to murder his enemies. Despite all of his education and opportunities, Sideshow Bob has spent most of his adult life in prison.

Homer, on the other hand, has a great life. A beautiful wife, thriving children, beer in the refrigerator and a helper monkey. While you’re not likely to catch him reading Tolstoy or listening to NPR, in the long run, that doesn’t even matter because Homer is smart enough to hold on to the best things in his life.