The "burka Barbie" in question is one of 500 dolls, many dressed by Italian designer Eliana Lorena, currently on display at Florence's Salone dei Cinquecento and to be auctioned off for Save the Children in association with Sotheby's. The exhibition, in concert with Barbie's 50th anniversary, has Mattel's blessing.

Anna advised me not to do the show. Not only is she unimpressed by previous segments in which Jezebel was mentioned, she was pretty sure they'd "play the concerned "feminist" card" while in fact getting in more sweeping digs at the pernicious influence of Islam. Indeed, although the doll hasn't generated a ton of media attention, it's been enough to prompt both reflexive anti-Islam rhetoric (ahem, Daily Mail commenters!) and feminist outrage. NOW's Marcia Pappas has apparently released the statement,

As feminists we believe that women must be able to make their own choices and that includes choices about the clothing they wear. But the burka is more than a choice. Women are forced to wear the burka or risk being murdered. Mattel should be ashamed. Making a profit by selling a doll that is clearly wearing a symbol of violence is not acceptable and there should be a public outcry to take this doll off the market.

But there were other reasons that dressing Barbie in a burka wasn't exactly the cause I wanted to get behind, especially on Fox News. A non-Muslim dressing a non-Muslim doll in a burka trivializes it and reduces it to a costume as surely as Barbie's Mackies and bikinis and doctors' coats. Also, the burka in question is scaled strangely - not to mention lime green and vermillion. Perhaps more problematically, the doll is dressed in a burka "or" a hijab, and the two are not the same thing.

But most of all... I don't think it is really that big a deal: it's a single doll. It's not mass-produced. It's presumably not intended for any children, Muslim or otherwise, and doesn't seem to involve any more social commentary than Malibu Barbie does on Proposition 8. That said, whether the designer intended it to be or otherwise, it's obviously a loaded choice: Saudi Arabia outlawed Barbie in 2003, and as the Christian Science Monitor reminds us, "in April 2008, Iranian prosecutor Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi warned in that Barbie dolls are 'destructive culturally and a social danger,'" prompting attempts to ban them from stores, although several Barbie-substitutes have failed to catch on. (Fulla, a more naturalistic fashion doll from the United Arab Emirates, has been successful across the Middle East.) And for many, Barbie can never be de-sexualized.

In the end, I spent so much time debating and deciding that by the time I'd made my decision, the Fox segment had already aired. Too bad: I'd arrived at what I thought was an inarguable thesis: at the end of the day, all Barbies are going to end up in the same place - naked and spread-eagle on the floor.

It's Barbie In A Burkha [Daily Mail]
Burka Barbie To Raise Funds For Save The Children [Christian Science Monitor]
Boycott Burqa Barbie [PajamasMedia]
Burqa Barbie [Fox News]

Gwen Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards, asking a total of 20 questions. Ten of those questions were specifically about foreign policy — including the first 9 — while Cheney brought up foreign policy in two addition domestic policy questions and Edwards snuck it into one of his domestic policy answers. In the latter three cases, Edwards and Cheney responded to the other's foreign policy forays in kind. That means that foreign policy discussions comprised two-thirds of the last Vice Presidential debate.

Unlike the two Vice Presidential debates (Lieberman-Cheney and Gore-Kemp) before that, in 2008, this country has troops stationed abroad fighting in conflicts that we started — i.e., we're in the midst of two foreign wars— much as it did in 2004. During the Cheney-Edwards debate, the foreign policy questions were about Iraq, Afghanistan, the use of intelligence, Iran and Israel — gosh, it kind of seems like those might be ongoing and relevant issues, right? (Let alone that Sarah Palin has suggested that we go to war with Russia, attack Pakistan and has tried to burnish her foreign policy credentials by getting photo ops with world leaders might be relevant.) But Nancy Pfuckingsucks and Doocy think that it would totally be unfair to ask Sarah Palin too much about it.

Doocy said, "it seems like they're stacking the deck against" Palin by asking too much about foreign policy — not that Gwen Ifill has released her list of questions or anything — and added "the average person is more concerned with domestic stuff than foreign stuff anyway." Presumably he meant "the average person that doesn't have loved ones in imminent danger fighting one of the two wars abroad in which we are currently embroiled." Pfuckingsucks agreed, says " "Exactly! I think the moderator will have some serious questions to answer if they do go so heavily on foreign policy," and defined "heavy" as sixty percent of the questions — which is, as I pointed out, less than the percentage of the Cheney-Edwards debate that centered in foreign policy. I guess it's only fair to focus on foreign policy questions when it's the Democrat without a whole lot of experience.

In much the same way that the Obama-Biden campaign is seeking to lower expectations of Biden by talking Palin up, the McCain-Palin campaign is seeking to mitigate her expected trouncing by blaming Gwen Ifill. They're literally going on the airwaves and trashing Ifill and her journalistic credentials in advance of a single question being asked in the hopes that she won't ask too much about foreign policy and to garner sympathy for Palin if she does. How long do you think until Pfuckingsucks takes to the air again to suggest that Ifill is "in the tank" for Obama because they have so much in common? Tuesday? Wednesday?

McCain Camp to Ifill: Go Easy on Palin [Talking Points Memo]
The Cheney-Edwards Vice Presidential Debate [The Commission on Presidential Debates]
Palin: U.S. Might Have To Go To War With Russia [Chicago Tribune]
McCain Retracts Palin's Pakistan Comments [CNN]
Sarah Palin Meets World Leaders [Huffington Post]
Obama-Biden Camp Hypes Palin’s Debating Skills [CNN]