It is difficult to find humor among fanatics.  A fanatic is basically a person who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject, and even though the U.S. has its own share of fanatics (I’m looking at you, Sen. Mike Lee), the Middle East has a vocal minority which fills up the headlines hollering “Death to America” and wanting to kill anybody with the last name of Feinstein. 

Some of the more fanatical nations in the Middle East have three exports: oil, dust, and stupidity.  And this time of year – the Barbie doll – is a threat to morality.

The renewed charge relies on an earlier “investigation” from the Saudi Arabian religious police calling Barbie a “Jewish toy,” a saucy creature with “revealing clothes and shameful postures.”

Okay, I’m not an expert on Barbie dolls, but I have a hard time viewing Barbie as a hussy.  As for her being Jewish, I’m not sure that comes as a surprise to the Mattel Corporation which has never been issued with an instruction booklet on how Barbie should not mix dairy and meat while washing dishes.

As further proof that Barbie doesn’t have a Hebrew heritage, her boyfriend Ken looks more like Tom Cruise than Benjamin Netanyahu or Woody Allen.  Also, I have never heard of a talking Barbie blurting out “Shalom!”

Granted, I don’t understand the fanatic’s mind. I don’t understand how it is moral and uplifting to strap a teenage girl with bombs and send her to blow up a Jerusalem café – yet it is dirty and nasty to dress Barbie in a swimsuit and put her in the front seat of her pink Barbie dream car with Ken riding beside her. 

  I don’t comprehend how it is godly to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center but it’s plain naughty to give Barbie an updo.

My advice to the fanatics is to stop reveling in catastrophe and going through life with a perpetual scowl and hatred of someone who practices a different religious belief.  The fanatics would be better off worrying more about creating jobs and getting Starbucks into their village.

In the long run, fanaticism doesn’t pay off.  Even after the Saudi Arabian religious police issued their report on a Barbie ban, the dolls were selling on the black market for as much as $50 in today’s money.  Look at it this way…we pay $2.29 for Saudi gasoline and they pay $50 for a plastic doll.

In my view, that’s payback.