You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.
Yesterday I watched episode where Simpsons family tries to get Maggie into prestigious pre-nursery school and for some reason Simon Cowell is admissions interviewer there. It really had that forced feel to it. I'm not saying old Simpsons didn't pull these kind of things but at least it didn't feel forced when they did it.When modern Simpsons does it, it feels forced and unneeded. With celebrity cameos, back then they actually had a purpose to the plot of the episode (Aerosmith playing at Moe's, all the MLB stars in Homer at the Bat, Barry White's singing in Whacking Day), now it's just "HEY LOOK AT THIS FAMOUS PERSON! HE'S ON THE SIMPSONS!"
With pop culture references, back then they did obscure stuff and older stuff. Now they just do whatever's recent, and due to the time it takes to animate an episode the references are immediately dated. *glares at The D'oh-cial Network*