As an aside: I live in a community with a rapidly growing South Asian population. Many people were shocked when they were looking at my friends' wedding album and noticed the swastika that was embedded in the beautifully inlaid album cover. The swastika, for those who don't know, is a religious symbol that predates Nazism by some 4,000 years. How long will it take (if it ever can) for that symbol to reclaim itself from the hateful ideology that stole it? Suppose an Indian-American political figure chose to wear this symbol to reflect his religious beliefs? What would the reaction be?

Shel: That's part of what makes this so fascinating. Think back to David Howard--the aide to D.C. mayor Anthony Williams who lost his job because he correctly used the word "niggardly" - which many incorrectly took to be a racial slur. We've spent more than 50 years uncritically saying things like "Perception is reality," then get bent out of shape when some "they" we don't approve of acts as if it's true. It's interesting to note that Howard was offered his job back following pressure from the gay community (he declined). Would he have been offered his job back if, say, the pressure had come from the Evangelical community? No one knows. The interesting question is, at what point and by what influence do images or words achieve the status of symbols.

Are you SURE that scarf is paisley? It doesn't look it to me.

One point we seem to be missing here is that Rachael Ray was not wearing a keffiyeh. It was a fringed scarf with a PAISLEY pattern. Maybe it looked a little like a keffiyeh, but it was a paisley scarf selected by a fashion consultant for the shoot.

Let's get a grip. Whatever your politics, can we please avoid confrontation of an article of clothing that sorta/kinda looks like another article of clothing?

Sheesh. With all the legitimate stuff to get worked up about, this one doesn't amount to anything but an excuse for Malicious Malkin to be at the forefront of another cause, regardless of how insipid it may be.

Dunkin Donuts caved in to irrational hysteria. It's too bad.

I mustn't've been clear. I didn't mean you were equating Nazism & Apartheid with Israel. My point was that it's interesting how, in an age of such sensitivity about symbols, some well-established symbols (eg., the cross, the Star of David) become controversial, while others (the keffiyeh, Mao and Che T-shirts, etc.) become absorbed into our culture as fashion. This says something about our culture, though I'm not sure what. Take Obama and the flag pins. Now, I don't care whether he wears a flag pin - but the fact that wearing a flag pin has become an expected political statement, the decision not to is a political statement of some kind. I also find it interesting how bigots on the Left and the Right are so oblivious to their own bigotry that they think their tidy stereotypes constituted common sense or even "enlightenment".

Jeff - Not equating any hateful thing (Nazism) with any other hateful thing (Apartheid or anything else). Just saying that despite the fact that Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts may not know what she's wearning means something to someone, it still means something. Is that a message DD wants to espouse? I think not, which is why it was a good call. And, btw, you're totally right about "Coffee snobs won't drink Dunkin' anyway, and Dunkin' lovers won't swing to Starbucks over this." But still, why unwittingly embrace symbols that are so inflamatory?

Funny - I don't think of the keffiyeh as an attractive article of clothing that might emerge into a hateful symbol. It's a symbol that has gone mainstream. When I was in college (too long ago), to wear a keffiyeh was a clear pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel statement. Is it a coincidence that it has become an innocuous fashion statement during the same period of time in which people have learned they can make straight-faced comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa? I don't think so. The inability to see the symbolism in the keffiyeh (and I'm going to apologize in advance for probably misspelling it) in certain quarters may indicate the same fuzzy-mindedness that leads to such moral equivalencies.

Having said that, the whole Dunkin' Donuts/Rachael Ray kerfuffle is a tempest in a box of joe. Coffee snobs won't drink Dunkin' anyway, and Dunkin' lovers won't swing to Starbucks over this.

And yet. The Nazi symbol used to be used in art as a motif long before the Nazis and no one gave it a second thought. It was simply a pleasing geographic arrangement, until the Nazis got a hold of it. Now that pleasing geographic arrangement causes a seriously bad, visceral reaction for those who know what it represents. I'm with Mike Klein. DD made the right call.

The scarf didn't simply raise alarm bells because it was Arabesque. It raised alarm bells because it bore more than a passing resemblance to a particular keffiyeh pattern popularised by Yasser Arafat as a symbol of Palestinian terrorism/"resistance".

On the one hand, most people who wear these have no clue about the intended symbolism and think it's just a cool scarf. But on the other, there are people for whom the look of this sends a shiver down their spines--family members of victims of terror, for starters.

I think DD made the right call--not because they or Rachael Ray (whose pork-filled menus are hardly the work of Islamic Jihad) are out to get Israel or the Jews, but because its not worth the hassle to be on the receiving end of a Michelle Malkin counter-jihad.

Right wing, left wing. You can always find blowhards and wingnuts on any side of the political aisle, and it's hardly endemic to any particular political ethos. While I'm hardly what you'd call a right-winger, I live in the deepest part of the Deep South in a very conservative area and I don't know a single person that thinks that this scarf thing is anything less than ridiculous.

What a pretty scarf. Where can I get one. I'll wear it on the Bill O'Reilly show.

To the first comment: I agree that fear is running a lot of what happens in America. But, it's definitely not limited to "right wing nut jobs" as you call them. The left wing and just about any other person with an agenda and a connection can strike the same fear, perhaps even more so.

BTW, it's pretentious political remarks like yours (even in an arguably non-political blog post) that turn so many off to politics.

I'll tell you what America runs on these days - and it's not Dunkin'. It's FEAR. That's the fuel these right wing nut jobs use to propel themselves into the national consciousness (not to mention into political office and then into Iraq).

I thought it was getting better, with so many people seeming to respond to messages of hope in the Democratic primaries, but then it turned out only the educated and affluent have hope. Apparently, everyone else is still afraid. Afraid enough that a little fabric can send them into a tizzy.

When a scarf ignites the blogosphere, sends corporate communications professionals into retraction mode, and creates a groundswell of smugness in the wingnut choir, I guess it really is time to be afraid. Very afraid.

How disheartening. Sigh.

Unbelievable. People will get their undies in a wad about ANYTHING these days.