Ilow

Dunkin' Donuts yanks Rachael Ray ad
Rachael Ray in the controversial Dunkin' Donuts commercial. By Carol Beggy and Mark Shanahan
Globe Staff / May 28, 2008

Does Dunkin' Donuts really think its customers could mistake Rachael Ray for a terrorist sympathizer? The Canton-based company has abruptly canceled an ad in which the domestic diva wears a scarf that looks like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men. Some observers, including ultra-conservative Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, were so incensed by the ad that there was even talk of a Dunkin' Donuts boycott. "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad," Malkin yowls in her syndicated column. "Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons." The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin' Donuts decided it'd be easier just to yank the ad. Said the suits in a statement: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial." (In case you're wondering, the stylist who selected the offending scarf was not Gretta Enterprises boss Gretchen Monahan, who appears on Ray's TV show as a style consultant.) For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin's response: "It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists."

Link with pic of Ray and the offending scarf:
http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/a...achael_ray_ad/

This episode is amazing to me for several reasons. First because people still think that there is a "liberal bias" in the media, and second because in a hundred years I would never have thought "oh, that scarf looks a lot like the head adornments of a jihadist." I can't believe that Dunkin Donuts, one of the bastions of American culture (well at least in the northeast...), pulled their ad because of conservatives like this Malkin twink. When we are changing our behavior like this the terrorists have won.

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ratbastid

Never mind that millions upon millions of completely peaceful muslims wear exactly the same traditional headdress. We're in a war on all of Islam, gaw dammit, cuz they hate freedom!

When you can't wear a scarf on TV, the terrorists (the ones in power in the United States) win.

Linens 'n' Things better pull all its ads for towels! That's what them terrists wear on their heads!

highthief

(Makes note not to go to Dunkin Donuts - they are obviously too stupid to make pastries.)

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ratbastid

Because they made the commercial in the first place, or because they caved to such ludicrous complaints?

I can't think of any principle I've got that would make me give up Dunkin Donuts.

Willravel

Michelle Malkin should have her rights to free speech removed due to gross misuse.

Shauk

I've never even been to dunkin donuts, so i cant boycott it one way or the other but this is freaking retarded. Seriously? this is our modern day society? this is what people care about?

This is trailer park politics.
This is something I could see the Jerry Springer crowd giving a damn about.

guyy

She doesn't speak freely anyway. She's hardwired directly into the right wing propaganda machine. You might call her a knee jerk conservative.

Sticky

Either, that would have been the appropriate way to handle it.
If you are not happy with something that Dunkin Donuts and feel really strongly about it then don't go anymore.

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Sticky The Stickman

levite

Wow. This is just a whole 'nother level of stupid....

Aside from just the obvious-- Dunkin' Donuts?! Someone, anyone thought that Dunkin' Donuts was supporting terrorism?!!

Rachael Ray?!!! Of all the American celebrities likely to infiltrate radical leftist symbology-- if, indeed, we can even use such terms for a head scarf worn by pretty much anyone who spends the bulk of their time living in 110-degree deserts-- into their projects, someone-- again I say, anyone-- decided that it was going to be TV's perkiest chef?! That's like accusing the Alpha Delts at the sorority house down the block of being closet fascists because they wear boots, and so did the Nazis.

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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Willravel

Krispy Kreme doesn't discriminate. Nuff said.

ASU2003

What happens if you never went there before either? Do you go in and take a bunch of napkins without buying anything? How are you supposed to (as an individual) change the policy of a corporation unless you have access to the media? It's not like we can collectively setup a protest in this country anymore. Either the police or national guard would come in and break up anything that prevented them from doing business.

And yes, I'm not saying that this would warrant that level of response, but there are other things that could happen, but the people (especially one person outside of the media/celebrity world) have no influence on corporate policy or direction.

FoolThemAll

Damnit. One more twit of a conservative pundit. Like we didn't have enough already.

Can't say the results bother me all that much, though. A commercial got pulled, okay. The country will survive.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Sticky

Convince others not to go, it is your right.
Dunkin Donuts can also decide to pull the ad, it is their right.
In fact a comentator can choose to comment on it as well, it is her right.

Isn't this what is great about your country. Your freedoms sometimes allow sillyness to take place but they keep you free.

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Sticky The Stickman

Ilow

Yeah, something similar happened with Citgo, after their president went on one of his American hating tirades, people successfully boycotted them, to the point that they began running ads telling people that they were really OK. Some people were even talking about removing the iconic Citgo sign that can be seen behind Fenway's green monster. In the DD case, I wonder how many other companies would have caved to the pressure, probably more than we would expect.

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"Religion is the one area of our discourse in which it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about"
--Sam Harris

Redlemon

What about the rainbow sprinkle donuts? Aren't they promoting the gay agenda? Also, they haven't renamed the Freedom Crullers yet.

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Bear Cub

Who could forget their "white hot chocolate" racist agenda? Even the Coolatta places emphasis on their stance regarding global warming.

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Living in the United Socialist States of America.

flstf

To be offended by this scarf one has to have quite an imagination and be actively searching for things to be offended by. Maybe the ad could be saved if Rachael would also wear an American flag pin.

Derwood

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but let's not paint Ms. Malkin as a conservative. She's a neo-con.......HUGE difference

Willravel

You know what the "con" in neocon stands for, right?

ratbastid

"Neocon" is to "Conservative" as a jack rabbit is to the easter bunny.

Tully Mars

I think DD is nutz for pulling the Ad. The entire non-event is asinine. But I swear the background in the photo is of the Capitol Mall in Salem, Oregon complete with the Capitol Dome and cherry blossoms.

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Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Jinn

That's a fucking neck scarf. Seriously? How does that look ANYTHING LIKE a keffiyeh?

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snowy

I know! What's funny is that DD says they picked the photo randomly from a selection of stock photos and came up with that; Salem is also one of the few places in Oregon that still has a Dunkin' Donuts. There aren't many left out here.

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Tully Mars

My father worked in that building for 30+ years. As a kid my brother and I used to climb on the marble pioneer carvings out front. We'd usually get about half way up and one of the "Capitol Police" would come out and tell us to get down. Some days they'd take us up to the "Pioneer Man" at the top, guess they we're just as bored as we were.

One summer, in my mid teens, we worked as "pages." No Mark Foley incidents, pretty boring really. But it beat picking strawberries and beans all summer.

Good times.

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FoolThemAll

Eh, I'd only rephrase my first remark. Great, as if we didn't have enough twits of a neoconservative punditry. It annoys me greatly that an ideology no more inherently dishonest/stupid than any other - though others may disagree there - seems to have more than its fair share of Malkins and Hannitys. It annoys me greatly because I hold a fair number of neocon beliefs and this shit embarasses me all the more because of it.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Tully Mars

I missed this post first read through.

Classic, thanks!

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

The_Jazz

The level of stupidity of all involved is only surpassed by the annoyance that is Ms. Ray herself.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Ilow

I know. she used to be sort of cute, but that perkiness is really wearing somehow.
by the way, I think that as long as conservatives endorse idiots like Rush, neocons will not be distinguishable from regular conservatives.

__________________
"Religion is the one area of our discourse in which it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about"
--Sam Harris

Bear Cub

I bet she gives great head, though.

__________________
Living in the United Socialist States of America.

The_Jazz

Unless she's going to keep her mouth shut up to the point that she gobbles my cock, it's not worth it. She's too fucking annoying.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

roachboy

i've been trying to get various indifferent dunkin donuts officials to confirm my suspicion that their nasty "chocolate sticks" became "sticks" rather than "cruellers" which they were forever, right around 2002, and so are a little brown dollop of reminder of those glorious days of the "freedom fries" when the bush people were able, with the press on its knees before them, to portray jacques chirac as an anarcho-pacifist.

this tempest in a teapot really is that stupid.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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matthew330

Does anyone see the irony: that DDs reaction to what amounts to political correctness - bending to the will of those you might offend - happens to be the brainchild of liberalism. I would think you all would be proud.

hiredgun

This thread isn't about 'liberalism', and I think the attempt to reduce every subject of debate to this meaningless binary is tiresome and accomplishes nothing. Can you think of a way to participate in the thread that doesn't hinge on your perceptions of the identities of other posters?


As far as the thread topic goes, it seems another sad manifestation of an ugly and dangerous nativist ignorance that isn't really terribly interesting but seems no less popular today than it was immediately after 9/11.

Charlatan

The way I see this non-event is that it is all about Michelle Malkin.

In a world where information flow reaches the torrent of multiple firehoses the only way for an attention whore to stand out is to say and do increasingly ridiculous things. The only way for the media (and their journalist actors) to hold eyeballs (eyeballs = money) is to play on the tropes of fear and increasingly shallow political muck-racking.

We drink it up and we drink deep.

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dc_dux

We should drink Absolute vodka....Malkin called for a boycott as a result of an Absolute ad that appeared in publications in Mexico that she claims is a call to Mexicans to invade the US and retake the southwest and California.

Absolut Reconquista

Invasion USA: Ad expanding Mexico 'hearkens to ideal time'

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dlish

not sure if any of you guys picked it out, but shes definately wearing keffiyeh, plus shes got her right index finger pointed out.

thats a signature move of the islamic 'proclaimation of faith'. i would say that all suicide bombers would say the proclamation of faith before they detonate.

shes definately a sleeper cell!

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Tully Mars

Well she is holding a DD drink, maybe she is about to commit suicide?

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

dlish

caption for the ad

"this is the bomb!"

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

matthew330

a - scold him
b - direct him
c - dismiss him

The only thing that changes is the responder. Would I have been allowed to say, "Michelle Malkin is fuckin crazy and so is the conservativeland mentality that scared their followers into being intimidated by this.

save it...seriously. your responses are "tiresome".

Tully Mars

LOL, or being it's RR it might read "I'm the Bomb!"

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club