From the Boston Globe via The Huffington Post comes word that Dunkin Donuts has pulled a commercial starring Rachael Ray over complaints that Ray’s neckwear was hostile to the state of Israel.
The ad, in which Ray wears what Dunkin describes as “a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design,” came under fire from conservative bloggers who said that the scarf looked like a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headdress which has become associated by some with Palestinian nationalism.
Makes perfect sense, right? Didn’t you always suspect that Ray was peddling those lattes on TV as a covert way of indoctrinating Americans into the delicious, cream-filled principles of Islamic jihad? And that, naturally, she would do so by wearing a scarf that looks like a garment that has a symbolic meaning most of her audience is unaware of? It’s sheer genius, is what it is!
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin applauded Dunkin’s take-back, though she herself only says the scarf—selected by Ray’s stylist—”appeared to be” a keffiyeh. Whether it actually was a keffiyeh is beside the point: the point is that Dunkin should show proper respect, fear and obeisiance to its agitators. “It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists,” Malkin wrote. “Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness.”
But bending over backward in the direction of Malkin’s political correctness—that’s more like it!
Judge for yourself, though, with this comparative neckwear photomontage to the sounds of The Buzzcocks:
[Update: By the way, whether coincidentally or by dint of some ingenious text-searching software, I notice the Tuned In blog is serving up a banner ad for Dunkin this morning. I apologize to freedom-loving peoples everywhere.]