Yeast Shall Overcome: Wingnut Reactions To A Dunkin Donuts Ad

I happened to see an ad on TV while trying to watch the History Channel this morning. (Mental note: Lord Running Boy loves World War II air battle analysis, and was particularly enthused about F6F gun camera footage. Where, oh where do the children get this aggression from?) I realized about halfway through the ad that the pitch-person was Rachel Ray, a populist-leaning chef with her very own show on cable which I've surfed past a few times; I say populist because her food theme seems to be "easy-to-cook dishes that won't trigger diabetes until you're 60."

Not being a current Dunkin customer, the imagery took a few moments longer to leech into the recesses of my brain: "Hey!...is that a kaffiyeh Rachel is wearing?? Oh, yes. Oh yes, it was, and woe be it unto the PR people at Dunkin Donuts come Tuesday morning. Now, direct oppo research doesn't hold much appeal for me, and I normally prefer to rely on my hand-picked, undetectable HUMINT team moles, since they're better at it and are usually family. But this one was tempting. So I Googled 'Rachel Ray, terrorist' and got 116,000 hits. Scrolling past the usual froth-mouthed dancing bears of the mainstream media, I went to a destination we'll call 'Little Green Footworshippers,' a paranoid DSMR-IV virulent-patriotism blog. I was not disappointed:

I didn’t believe this story when people first started emailing about it; but sure enough, its true. Dunkin Donuts, the venerable old fried dough seller, is the latest American firm to casually promote the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada, the kaffiyeh, via Rachael Ray: Dunkin’ Breakfast Choices.

Here’s an LGF search with many previous examples of the mainstreaming of the kaffiyeh. I’m actually getting hate mail from Rachael Ray supporters (!) but this isn’t happening in a vacuum, and Ray is not the first celebrity to show up wearing one of these.

UPDATE at 5/23/08 12:35:54 pm:

This isn’t just my lonely opinion; for more on the kaffiyeh as the symbol of Palestinian terrorism (they don’t call it that, of course), see the “Magazine of the Party for Socialism and Liberation:” The Palestinian kaffiyeh: a symbol of solidarity [S&L Magazine].

A survey of some of the thread comments:

• I'm going to Krispy Kreme!

• Not that I've been to a DD in years, but I think that maybe I should never go back.

• Crap. I literally just took a sip of a Dunks coffee.

• Who owns Dunkin Donuts? It's going to be hard to get my wife and daughter to stop going there.

• Is that hack Rachel Ray gonna whip us up some dunkin donut falafels to go along with PLO cafe latte?

• It's not just DD in this case. Rachel Ray has an empire. Her Food Network shows, her talk show, her magazine, her line of cookware.... All should be boycotted.

• That is Rachel Ray. I'm not sure that she actually understands the significance of what she is wearing; at least I have never heard anything of her politics. She doesn't strike me as a moonbat, but she may be.

• What is the building in the background? Can anyone tell? Rachel Ray . . . I wonder if she might be of Muslim heritage . . .

• She should be ashamed, but I'd bet dollars to donuts (sorry!) she has no idea the significance of what she's wearing... That does not excuse DD for running an ad w/ her wearing it, tho... What's next, swastikas? Ron Paul T-shirts?

• Their shareholders must be made aware this is offensive and undermines our war effort.

I'll watch the ad closer if I see it again, and will update you if Rachel is observed performing any goose-stepping islamofascist choreography, advocates fried-dough suicide bombs, or starts singing "Yeast Shall Overcome."

P.S.--I think the building in the background might be a Mormon Temple, possibly the one in Chevy Chase, Maryland.