What a month for Western threats to Iran --- first, it was Facebook-organised gatherings, then it was water fights in Tehran, then it was eating watermelon....
And now it's the cartoon series The Pink Panther.
The famous pink cat, born in the 1960s, came out of retirement in 2010 with a new series, Pink Panther and Pals, on The Cartoon Network. The most serious allegation against the revived animations would seem to be that they aren't very funny, but the Iranian newspaper Alef is far more perceptive than I.
Pink Panther and His Pals would appear to be the advance force in the army of Western subversion.
Alef notes that, in this scurrilous episode "Make Pink Not War", the Pink Panther's twin neighbours are waging battle because one has a moustache and a beard.
After a series of frustrated attempts to end the feud, our pink friend finally has the idea of bringing equality and peace through an electric shaver:
Personally, I find this reassuring --- if only it were so easy to resolve, say, the Israel-Palestine dispute or any matter in US-Iran relations over the last 30+ years.
Alef, however, sees an evil menace. "Secularism" is being infiltrated into the minds of Iranian boys and girls so when they grow up, they will disgrace Islam and Iran by shaving off their beards.
The article concludes, "Proper training in Iranian culture of children is very important. Therefore, only the above text is a reminder that, God willing in the future, more monitoring is done on special programmes for children, guarding against the Western culture we see in these programmes."