There’s a story making the rounds on the Interwebs about Dunkin’ Donuts pulling an ad in which Rachel Ray wears a patterned scarf. This scarf caused a furor because it apparently resembles an Arabic keffiyeh – a detail which enraged talking heads who are so xenophobically knee-jerk in their responses that they’re practically kicking themselves in the face over this. Besides the corporate idiocy of Dunkin’ Donuts’ response, I’m pretty pissed that none of the apoplectic objectors bothered to look into what a keffiyeh actually is. But I guess that would require caring about people who don’t look and dress like they do…
For the curious, the keffiyeh is cloth (plain or patterned) used by Arabic peoples to shield their heads from the sun. While it has become associated closely with prominent antagonistic Arabic figures, it’s origins and meaning are no more harmful than a t-shirt.
So terrorists often wear sandals. Am I gonna draw angry stares from people here in the US because I sport a pair of flip flops? Puh-lease.
Off topic but can you please look into what’s going on with your RSS feed, RVA blogs, and your install of Mint Bird Feeder?Clicking through to your articles from my subscription to the RVABlogs RSS feed in Google Reader always results in a page with the following text:Mint Bird Feeder is active.The clickthrough always takes me to URLs similar to the one below:http://www.danielcwarshaw.com/feeder/?FeederAction=clicked=Articles+%28RSS2%29=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danielcwarshaw.com%2Fdorkin-donuts=Dorkin%26%238217%3B+DonutsThanks.
Hmmm…thanks for pointing that out, Tripp. I had no idea that was happening. I’ll pass this along to Shaun Inman (who created the Mint stats program) to see whether I’ve set something up wrong, or if there’s another problem.I wonder if anybody else sees that? I have some friends who also use Google Reader (but don’t go to RVABlogs) and they’ve never indicated such an issue…weird.
As a test, I subscribed directly to your RSS feed (http://www.danielcwarshaw.com/feed).Clicking through from Google Reader using that took me to the expected article.Perhaps something’s being lost in translation at RVABlogs.Anyway…sorry for hijacking the comments on this article. I couldn’t find a “contact” link.Cheers.-Tripp
You know what, I suppose it would help to have a “contact” link on here as well :-)These are the sort of things I never thought about back in the days of 5 readers who were all friends and relatives!I’ll add a contact link in the side bar shortly.
The complaints about the scarf are the oddest thing. I remember all my cousins wearing scarves like that in Denmark back in the 70’s and early 80’s. It was very fashionable. As I’ve seen it come back I thought it was just just like bell bottoms coming back, not some nefarious islamic plot to make us all dress alike….
I actually own a keffiyeh, and to be honest I don’t wear it too often as I a have a beard and I really don’t want some idiot calling the police. I love the scarf and in winter it is suprisingly warm. In the summer it really does do a good job of keeping you cool in direct sunlight. It’s a shame that they’ve come to be viewed as they are by so many people. Mine came from a really good friend of my from Jordan, who was very moderate and actually a “christian”. I think these are the same people who still think george bush is a goood guy.