"Totally screwed"

Harry Shearer, excellent in many comedic roles throughout the last couple decades, is nonetheless a poster child for Hollywood having gone to one's head.

Shearer, who voices "Simpsons" characters Mr. Burns, Smithers and Ned Flanders, said this week that he believes the show has run its course and that he'd "rather not be there now.

"It makes me sad," Shearer told the Irish Examiner.

His remarks seem to have set a fire on this side of the Atlantic.

"I don't know why I have to defend the quality of the show to Harry Shearer . . . He's a guy who's been a malcontent, in my view," Al Jean, "The Simpsons" long-time producer, told The New York Post yesterday. "For someone earning millions off the show this year . . . I just think it's unfathomable for him to take a shot at us."

Shearer thinks he's getting "totally screwed":

"What I can say is that it's possible to make a very nice living and still get totally screwed."

How much a nice living?

Shearer and his co-stars reportedly pull down over $250,000 an episode.

We should all be so fortunate to be thusly "totally screwed".