Filed by KOSU News in World News.
February 6, 2012

As most of the headlines we’re seeing say: “Aww, man!”

A newspaper in Iran says the authorities there have banned dolls of characters from The Simpsons because they supposedly promote Western culture.

So that means Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie and, of course, Bart, join Barbie on the list of toys deemed to be too hot for Iranian children to handle.

As Tom Ricks says on The Best Defense blog he does for Foreign Policy magazine, Homer “probably doesn’t care because they don’t sell Duff beer” in Iran.

We suspect Lisa, judging from her ongoing war about Malibu Stacy, would be outraged to hear that she’s been compared in any way to Barbie.

Bart, though, might say “cowabunga dude! Maybe I can hang out with her!”

By the way, Iranian authorities apparently say that Spiderman and Superman are OK. “They help oppressed people and they have a positive stance,” Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, secretary of policymaking at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, told Shargh. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]