Satanic/Islamic dolls??

I was forwarded an e-mail yesterday from one of my right-wing acquaintances here in Columbus (everyone I know, it seems, is on the left or right ... not in the lonely middle with me.) She's on a lot of TV and radio commercials that start with "Hi, y'all!"

Basically its an e-mail making the conservative rounds about how this cooing, giggling doll sounds like it says "Islam is the light" at some point and later says "Satan is king" or something like that. I, however, think it's a case of hearing what you want to hear or seeing what you want to see. People hear dirty words in "Louie, Louie," hear Satanic messages in Beatles records played backward and see the Virgin Mary in cupcakes. If you're looking for problems, controversies and things to get worked up about, you'll find them. And the e-mail points out that while the Snopes Web site discredited this story, Snopes is run by two people who are "Jewish -- very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal." Oh my God! Jews are on the Web now! First Hollywood, now the Internet!

And these right-wingers are mad about this doll. Never mind that Muslims don't exactly praise Satan. In fact, their version of hell is gruesomely and repeatedly depicted in the Koran, much worse than the description of Jesus' descent into hell in the Christian book of Nicodemus that they edited out of the modern Christian Bible. So if this doll is praising Satan and Islam, it's probably gonna need therapy when it grows up. Or it'll get beheaded by the Taliban or something. I don't believe all religions are created equal and some are more evil than others, but a doll is a doll is a doll. Unless they're inflatable.

As for the doll, I'm going to keep playing with mine despite its efforts to convert me to Islam and Satanism at the same time. I once had a Godzilla "action figure" and I somehow managed to resist its urging me to crush cardboard Japanese villages. And my Darth Vader "action figure" could not lure me to the dark side of the force. However, my Jimmy Buffett "action figure" did manage to talk me into a frozen margarita or two.

Judge for yourself in the video at the top of this post. I once sat through a 15-minute videotape when I worked at the Americus paper in which a reader kept showing us how you could see the Virgin Mary in the trees in his backyard.

"Um, yeah, right."