“Climate Barbie” is a brilliant barb.

Wish I’d thought of it myself.

That the sling originated with the Alberta bureau chief of The Rebel is neither here nor there, beyond the fact that The Rebel is an often nasty and deliriously right-wing political and social commentary media website.

They make their bones speaking the unspeakable, stupidly so much of the time, ideologically consorting with the American alt-right movement and so at least tacitly aligning with the ultra-deplorables who reject mainstream conservatism in favour of white nationalism.

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Not much there which I’d care to defend.

But I do defend the art of the insult.

Winston Churchill, who sparkled at the withering put-down, has left us with countless gems.

Lady Astor: “Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison.”

Churchill: “Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it.”

On Charles Beresford, British admiral and later MP: “He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.”

Bessie Braddock, Labour MP: “Winston, you’re drunk.”

Churchill: “My dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”

Rebel Media — more specifically, founder Ezra Levant — ain’t no Winston Churchill. He’s a pestiferous flibbertigibbet.

Nobody could call federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna ugly. She’s gorgeous, a bilingual lawyer with a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics.

But “Climate Barbie” captures her perfectly, if one were a global warming troglodyte inclined to lob a sarcastic brickbat aimed, presumably, at McKenna’s purported shallowness. A bit of mischief, that’s all.

In September, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says she was disappointed by a tweet from Conservative MP Gerry Ritz referring to her as a “climate Barbie.” McKenna says she would rather discuss her work than have to respond to sexist comments. (The Canadian Press)

Sexist? Sure. Big deal.

Suggestive of bubble-headed blankness? Sure. Big deal.

Offensive? McKenna certainly thinks so, as did the hordes who took to social media over the weekend to you-go-girl applaud her for calling out a Rebel reporter at a news conference following a meeting of provincial and territorial environment ministers.

It was on that occasion that McKenna meandered into a sideways exchange with the Rebel journalist. “So you’re the Rebel Media that happens to call me Climate Barbie.

“I certainly hope that you will no longer use that hashtag.”

McKenna could have played it for chuckles and still made her point: “Me Barbie, you Ken.”

But no, she got all prim and wounded and righteous.

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“The reason I’m asking you to do this is because I have two daughters. There are lots of girls that want to get into politics and it is completely unacceptable that you do this.”

Well, unacceptable is in the ear of the beholder.

Politics is a rough-and-tumble business. A wiser person would ignore the snarky smirch rather than wince and whinge. Or ding back instead of taking callow refuge in a pettish crybaby rejoinder, a pseudo-burka posture that reinforces paternalistic attitudes toward women.

I will borrow from the alt-right glossary and characterize McKenna as a snowflake.

Sexism has become conflated with sexual crime, especially with the all-in me-too-ism that has gone viral in the wake of the creepy Harvey Weinstein scandal, a phenomenon that has detonated with ack-ack of every minor aggravation, the sloppy seductive move, the unwanted pass, the innuendo-laden comment, surging to the level of assault.

They’re not the same thing at all. But when powerful, accomplished women present themselves as delicate flowers who should be protected from mean men — and how do you propose we do that without stomping all over fundamental civil liberties? — the real harm done to females burrows down further into the public consciousness: We are fragile, we require guardianship and safe spaces — a virtuous virtual purdah.

Goodness, when Adam Vaughan, of all people — it would be hard to find a more saintly lefty, ticks all the boxes of progressive politics, a White Ribbon kind of guy — gets accused of bullying by Conservative MP Alice Wong, then we’ve definitely jumped the shark.

Wong claimed last week that Vaughan confronted her, “hovered,” during a ride on a parliamentary bus over something she’d said in question period. “This is a form of elder abuse!” the 69-year-old complained in an interview afterwards, as reported by The Canadian Press. So intimidated was Wong that she’s now requested a staffer to accompany her at all times.

If so easily intimidated, maybe Wong should be in a different profession and swaddled in cotton balls.

In another recent incident of pitchfork mobbing, David Horsey, two-time Pulitzer-winning L.A. Times columnist and editorial cartoonist — now that’s impressive multi-tasking — was bludgeoned into apologizing for a mildly taunting observation made in print about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Horsey segued into the passage by comparing President Donald Trump to former (disgraced) Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, “when he was stocking the Fox News lineup with blond Barbie dolls in short, tight skirts.” Nobody took umbrage with the Barbie reference, probably because it was aimed at women gracing the screen for a right-wing media outfit. And the remark was pretty much accurate.

But Horsey ran afoul of the twitocracy by describing Huckabee as resembling a “slightly chunky soccer mom who organizes snacks for the kids’ games. Rather than the fake eyelashes and formal dresses she puts on for news briefings, Sanders seems as if she’d be more comfortable in sweats and running shoes.”

That was hardly a drive-by snipe dripping with sexist lingo. Unless soccer mom, sweats and running shoes equals stereotype jibes. But, oy, the backlash, the proclamations of “body-shaming” and woman-defamation. It was a rare instance where the left-wing chattering classes could piously rush to the defence of a right wing figure, all non-partisan-like. (“How did that ever get through the editors?” one prolific media personage demanded on Twitter.)

Again, a fart in a mitten.

But everybody has apparently taken to the shut-up catechism: Don’t like what you say, or how you say it, so damn well better not say it, you hear?

Mainstream media has emboldened wannabe censors by more often than not turtling in the face of blowback. God forbid a huffy reader or viewer should go unappeased. It’s ironic that, at a time when social media commentary is no-holds-barred savage, those very same revilers should be demanding squishy tact and capitulation to bland.

In an ideal world, maybe, everyone would be austerely polite and mush-mouthed.

But what a dull world that would be.

Rosie DiManno