Idle Threat of the Week

When you pay more at the pump, money (although not necessarily your money) goes to rouge oil producing states like Iran. Which turns out to be a problem . . . for Iran.

That is because its citizens are now flush was petrol cash, and finally have the means to do what they've always wanted to do: Buy Barbie dolls from Iran's rapidly increasing toy black market.

Continuing his country's decade long campaign against Barbie, this week Iran's top judiciary official warned that the smuggling of the plastic doll is a "danger that needs to be stopped" and posed a threat to the "identity of the new generation."

Good luck with that. As any American can tell you, the more affluent a society becomes, the more the society becomes oriented around satisfying the materialistic whims of its seven year olds.

You know where they don't have any problems with "destructive and amoral" Western toys?

North Korea, that's where. So if the Iranians were really serious about de-barbification, they'd turn off the oil spigots, and embrace the one square meal a day of grass. And the Islamic Republic's ever-weaker anti-Barbie rhetoric wins Idle Threat of the Week for Arpil 21-27th.

It also needs to pointed out that Barbie's critics, whether they be the body-image feminists of the West or the body-covering mullahs of the Muslim world, are always putting all the blame on her. What about Ken? He still doesn't have a penis. Nobody thinks that puts some weird ideas in little girls heads.