http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/05/27/dunkin_donuts_yanks_rachael_ray_ad">www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/05/27/dunkin_donuts_yanks_rachael_ray_ad

You have to check out the above, it's positively ridiculous. Scarves support terrorism? Are you kidding me? That's like saying wearing a sweater with black and white stripes makes you a bank robber, or symbolically states that you support bank robbery.

I can't stand Rachael Ray, I think she's an over-hyped twit, but frankly this is a preposterous allegation for anyone to make, even Michelle Malkin, who wrote oh so eloquently that the scarf, allegedly a keffiyeh, "is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad."

Her editorial: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/05/28/rachael_ray,_dunkin_donuts_and_the_keffiyeh_kerfuffle

Now, with all due respect to Ms. Malkin (an admittedly pointed comment), are you out of your damn mind?

Ok, first off, Yassir Arafat is not the fashion guru of the Palestinian world, he was a political and social leader of those people, and a terrorist. They viewed him as a leader, but that doesn't mean they followed his dress code; George Bush didn't 'popularize' the suit.

Secondly, when I look at Rachael Ray, the woman who brought us 30 Minute Meals, several thoughts cross my mind, but none of them are supporter of terrorism, regardless of her choices in ugly neck apparel. Thirdly, you ninny, keffiyehs are worn on your head, not your neck. They're worn like a turban, mainly so that people who live in a desert don't have sunburn on their heads, and so that when large dust storms come, they can cover their faces.

Now, I don't want to hurt your brain, Ms. Malkin, but please imagine something with me: you have a bunch of disgruntled colleged students in New York demonstrating repeatedly for communism. Let's guess what most of them would be wearing... jeans and Yankees caps? Maybe Mets? Does this mean blue jeans are pro-communist? Should we boycott Levi's? Is the blue really a hidden symbol representative of liberalism? No. It's not. And so if you have a group of Palestinian men organized in any regard, chances are at least several will be wearing head scarves, also known as... (time to gasp) - keffiyehs.

Yassir Arafat was a very political man, he wore his particular head scarf decorated with the colors of his national identity, and since he wore it for about 40 years, people associate that scarf with him. It's similar to how I wear glasses, I have for my whole life, and now, when my friends see me without my glasses, they remark that it's a little strange, I'm associated with my glasses and they are with me. If I wore very distinctive glasses for a long time, like Arafat's distinctive keffiyeh, they might even think of me if they saw similar glasses, but I can guarantee you that they wouldn't be reminded of me whenever they saw glasses.

To prove this point, let's look at all the other people who have worn keffiyehs that Ms. Ray could surreptitiously be trying to seduce us into supporting:
Lawrence of Arabia - perhaps this is all a ploy to help Britain and Arabia resist the Ottoman Empire?
British troops (called shemaghs, much like the British call bathrooms loos) - Dunkin Donuts supports our allies troops?
Charlie Sheen in Navy SEALs - Fan of crappy 90s movies?
Kanye West - "Tell em holla at ya boy, cuz I'll be coming home"

You see the ridiculousness of this whole charade, Ms. Malkin, how accusing Rachael Ray of supporting terrorism is like saying Barney supports gay pride because he's purple? There is nothing terror inducing about a 39 year old woman with a hand bag and a latte, even if she's wearing an ugly floral scarf, which, if you'll notice, is a very different design than the spiderweb-type design that Arafat sported.

I'm sorry if pandering to your base of drum-thumping super-patriots is so difficult that it forces you to attack this younger, more attractive Martha Stewart, but it's really a stretch, even for you. I'm sorry scarves remind you of A-rabs, that's really no one's problem but your own. But to say that Rachael Ray and Meghan Megan should know better than to wear a loosely knit scarf because it might evoke your paranoid delusions is preposterous.

As for your 'beef' with Urban Outfitters; I don't really know what to tell you, sweetheart. Scream about it somemore, maybe those meddling, anti-authoritarian kids will get the message that the 'authority' doesn't like Urban Outfitters. Not to accuse you of being an authority on anything, but allow me to break a hard something to you, the reason Urban Outfitters sells those hateful items is because their target customers will buy them, because their target customers are liberal to a fault and think that everything you say must be untrue. So really all you're doing is embedding the 'badness' of these items into the psyches of America's youth, many of whom are so messed up on poor breeding, good pot, and/or prescription drugs to think past the b.s. (yours and theirs) and actually realize what they're supporting. They just know that you don't like it, so they think they do.

And to rebut a rather obnoxious note you ended on:

"It's just a scarf, the clueless keffiyeh-wearers scoff. Would they say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?

Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence -- unintentionally or not -- they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style."

Now, I'm not a keffiyeh-wearer myself, so I can't really speak for an entire culture of Middle Eastern people, or the questionably-fashionable in America and Japan, but I don't recall ghost hoods being a cultural symbol in the South before the Ku Klux Klan came about, meaning there is no cultural signifigance to them other than terror, plus the fact that looking like a dead cone head is still beyond America's regressing taste in clothing, so I don't think that's quite the same argument. There's no doubt a keffiyeh could be construed as political, much like a bumper sticker. But not all bumper stickers are political, and not all scarves hate America.

When have scarves lead to violence? Certainly you're not implying that the American people are too stupid to know the difference between a scarf and an AK-47? Frankly, the result of your little pissing contest with Dunkin Donuts annoys me, because I like it when companies exercise their right to sell whatever the hell they want to, and I like it when you exercise your right to not buy it. Is bending over to your side any worse then bending over to mine? Why does Dunkin Donuts need to bend over at all? Why all this bending; this isn't porn, stop with the bending. And wanting other people to bend. I thought we needed to stand against terrorism, the way you have it, we'll all be so busy bent over in outrage at terrorism that we won't even see when it sneaks around and 'gives it to us', so to speak.

Oh, and if you want to imply that every American who hates terrorism also hates Arabian scarves, you might be a little off base. I hate terrorism; I'll rant about that next. But I also really don't give a damn what Rachael Ray wears on her neck, or head, or waist for that matter. In fact, I'd rather her wear nothing at all, then I might actually watch her show.

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To my readers, if there are any yet (and hopefully ever) - check out the scarf for yourselves, the Huffington Post still has an image of the ad up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/dunkin-donuts-pulls-ad-fe_n_103859.html