Is Rachel Ray Secretly a Jihadist?

Why worry about real outrages committed by powerful people when you can get mileage and maybe distract public attention by ginning up a phony controversy about silly things not done by demicelebrities?

Conservative bloggers are kicking up a fuss over a recent Rachel Ray ad for Dunkin Donuts, reading far more into a neck scarf than the unassuming donut chain had bargained for.

Blogger Pam Geller was first to characterize Rachel Ray's neckwear in an ad for iced coffee as a keffiyeh. That is the traditional head garb originally worn by Palestinian peasants, and has served in the Middle East as a symbol of the Palestinian resistance since the 1960s.

Keffiyehs have made a recent entrée into Western fashion as neck scarves, prompting the likes of Malkin and Geller to blast the items as "icons of genocide," "the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada," "jihadi chic," and "hate couture."

To some Western wearers, the keffiyeh may be an intentional antiwar fashion statement (Urban Outfitters sold some scarves it had branded as such), or a show of solidarity with Palestinian nationalism.

But to many of the fashion forward, the black and white scarves are nothing but an exotic touch to their wardrobes, as persistent media coverage of the Middle East in recent years has brought fashions from that region into focus.

In the case of Rachel Ray, the connections to Palestinian ideology are all the more tenuous. According to a Dunkin Donuts' spokeswoman, the scarf worn by Ray in the ad may be reminiscent of the keffiyeh, but was actually a "black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design" - not the black-and-white chain-mail patterned cloth made famous by Yassir Arafat.

Ad Age reports that Dunkin Donuts has pulled the ad nonetheless, eager to put an end to the distraction and get back to their original point: selling iced coffee.

by Liz Gunnison

(Jeff Bercovici is in vacation.)