Below The Beltway

The story about the Dunkin’ Donuts advertisement pulled for the unpardonable sin of showing Rachel Ray wearing a scarf has hit the mainstream news:

BOSTON, May 29 — Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. The design was actually paisley, the company said, and was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot.

Nevertheless, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad, which began appearing online May 7, over the past weekend because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.”

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

You mean trees with pink blossoms that bloom in the spring, when it might be cool enough to wear, oh I don’t know a scarf ?

But, of course Malkin and others of her ilk don’t look at the ad and see a scarf, they see something that Arabs wear:

Amahl Bishara, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East, said complaints about the scarf’s use in the ad demonstrate misunderstandings of Arab culture and the multiple meanings that symbols can take on, depending on someone’s perspective.

“I think that a right-wing blogger making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S.,” Bishara said in a phone interview. “Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East — by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm.”

While some extremists and terrorists may wear kaffiyehs, “to reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it,” Bishara said.

Sort of like assuming that everyone who wears a crucifix supports the murdering hoardes of the Crusaders of the 11th Century.

Of course, while the absurdity of this whole situation is self-evident to most rational people, the Malkin-esque corner of the blogosphere still thinks they were right.

Consider this:

Symbols mean something. Attempting to mainstream it, in effect softening its barbaric message, is an affront to every victim of Islamic jihad and the war we are engaged it. We are fighting for our way of life and our very lives, we should not be wearing the icon of the enemy. Dunkin Donuts was right. It does not belong in an advertisement.

There is a quiet jihad as powerful and as effective as violent jihad (if not more so) being waged on our culture, our economy, our schools, our freedoms.

Or this:

We’ve covered many previous examples of the promotion of the kaffiyeh by celebrities and designers and large clothing chains, and even the New York Times has noted it. Hard left anti-war and pro-Palestinian groups openly proclaim that wearing the kaffiyeh is showing solidarity with Palestinian “resistance.” But none of these facts matter to the see-no-evil monkeys, of course.

Oh and remember the joke I made about Meghan McCain’s scarf ?

Well, apparently Debbie Schlussel thinks its yet another example of the Islamist-Under-Every-Bed mentality that these people live in:

It’s a disgusting display that Ms. McCain would sport this garb of torture and murder and death and inhumanity. She shouldn’t be giving out fashion tips, when it’s quite clear she needs some, herself. Either she is extremely ignorant or she is deliberately donning this (less likely of the two). Either way, it’s disturbing. And it’s a far cry from even the partying, drunken Bush twins. Meghan McCain says on her site that she worked for Newsweek and “Saturday Night Live.” So she doesn’t know what news or humor is. But this fully grown adult should know better than to don a keffiyeh.

People like this are making even a drunk old fool like Joe McCarthy seem reasonable by comparison.