Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

When English children get too fat or too thin, or when morose German teenagers massacre entire classrooms, the knee-jerk reaction of the Euro-elites is to blame... Hollywood. The toxins emanating from Los Angeles contaminate Arcadia, goes the yawn-inducing argument, and lead rosy-cheeked maidens into obesity or anorexia while causing strapping young lads to turn into pallid loners obsessed with getting high scores in the ultra-violent video-game spin offs of the latest Tinseltown trash. Or something like that.

Funnily enough, though, once Hollywood bestows an Oscar upon a film made by those incredibly civilized foreigners, the criticism melts away faster than the Polar icecaps and the golden calf, er, statuette is greeted with obsequious fawning. That's people, for you.

Anyway, as if our troubled world did not need another crisis, 15 British marines were seized by Iran's Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq on Friday and they may be charged with spying. According to the MSM, this is all about a border infringement, but it's not. Here Rainy Day must go into Hersh mode as we reveal that a "former intelligence officer" has told us that the spat was prompted by the film "300", which unflatters the glory that once was Persia. Javad Shamaqdari, a cultural advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already branded the movie "psychological warfare" against Iran. Hollywood!

A modest proposal: Instead of a messy trial in Teheran, all that's needed to defuse the situation and secure the release of the kidnapped Brits is for Tony Blair to ban "300" and apologize to Iran for slavery, the Irish Famine and for being an ally of the Great Satan, in whose dream factory the awful thing was incubated. And today, no doubt, our leading intellectuals will be calling for such moves when they flood the opinion zone with righteous attacks on "300" (which is a huge box-office success, of course). Oh no! Spoke too soon. The Groan has got its retaliation in already. Masoud Golsorkhi, an Iranian who appears to have decamped to the decadent West, laces his unintentionally hilarious harangue — "A racist gore-fest" — with the likes of this: "The Spartans behave as the archetypal id of the neo-conservative regime changers' ego — uncompromising and unforgiving. This is the language of the 'surge' rather than Baker-Hamilton recommendations." Hollywood!

Much to the chagrin of Masoud Golsorkhi and all the other Persians in their cheap beige Ahmadinejackets, the Rainy Day team has booked its tickets for a screening of "300" next week. It's only a cartoon, right? And it's not even Danish.