We must never surrender the WAR ON PAISLEY!!!

I’ll be on the look-out for an armada of rusty old pick-up trucks heading toward the Dunkin Donuts with shotguns blastin and hound dogs baying.

Rachel Ray wore a fringed, paisley scark in a Dunkin Donuts commercial, as seen in the photo.

A right wingnut, agressively anti-Islamic blog, (Little Green Footballs), accused her of promoting terrorism by wearing a kaffiyeh on national TV. Then the hysterically anti-immigrant Michelle Malkin went rabid with the accusation on her blog. Loud calls for boycott rang out in right wing bloggerland. Dunkin Donuts caved cowardly and pulled the ad.

Here are couple of accounts of the kaffiyeh kerfuffle:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/dunkin-donuts-pulls-ad-fe_n_103859.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/business/media/30adco.html

You know what’s funny? In their kneejerk reactions to everything that violates their sensibilities, neocons have become more mamby-pamby and shrill about being offended than even P.C. liberals ever were at the height of their influence. What was Schwarzenegger’s jab at Democrats being girly-men? Apparently, takes one to know one; it might even take two.

pssst: I am wearing nothing but a glazed kaffiyeh at this very moment!

Ma chere Mlle. Jardin, ne jouez pas avec mon coeur.

It never occured to me that the good old ‘PLO scarf’ could be seen as something negative. For us it was always a symbol of freedom and solidarity.

And I don’t know about you guys, but after it’s massive popularity in the 80′s, it’s back as a fashion accessory over here, as strong as it ever was. If the kids walking down the street here were accused of encouraging terrorism because the were wearing a particular scarf, I think we’d all laugh heartily.

Of course this is a complete non-issue, just another way for some overy-loud voices to gain some temporary new ears to shout into.

After a recent viewing of Kanye West’s video for the song Homecoming, Mr. West has been put on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist.

The only thing that shocks me about this story is that Rachel Ray’s stylist described the scarf as paisley, and everyone else went along with the gag. Unless that thing’s got a paisley-motif border on it such as I’ve never seen before on a kaffiyeh (also spelled keffiyah, keffiyeh, keffiya, kufiyah, kufiya, kaffiya, kafiya, kaffia, ceffia, hatta, and shemagh), no way is “paisley” the correct description.

If Rachel Ray’s scarf is woven, the name of that pattern is houndstooth. For example, here’s a picture of John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain wearing a houndstooth version.

If her scarf is embroidered, it’s got a regular tiling pattern on it, just like every other embroidered kaffiyeh out there. (Except for Yasser Arafat. His had something more like a fishnet pattern on it, and the embroidery was less cheesy.) Note: Ray’s scarf doesn’t have the broad border of shallow chevrons you see on kaffiyehs that are labeled “authentic” for the tourist trade.

(The single commonest version has the overall embroidered tiling pattern, border stripes in a 1/1 weave, and the border with rows of shallow chevrons. As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting thing about it is that there are cognate decorative knitting stitch patterns for all the standard kaffiyeh patterns. It would make an interesting design for a lace shawl.)

General history and theory, plus the current kerfluffle

HawgBlog has long engaged in what he calls KufiyaSpotting. Read down his string of posts to learn more about the current kerfluffle, and the overall status of yon scarf, than you can learn anywhere else. Basic thesis: wearing a kaffiyeh was originally a political gesture, then it turned into street fashion. (Also from his blog: if your idea of a good time is wearing a t-shirt that’s almost guaranteed to get you yelled at by someone, get your own copy of the viral Anne Frank in a kaffiyeh design.)

Second best summary: Kabobfest’s A modern chronology of the keffiyah craze. (Note: the author doesn’t like Israel. If that possibility offends you, don’t read it.)

From Memoirs of an Immigrant, A checkered icon: the kaffiyeh. Clear and sensible. Like everyone else, he says that while some kaffiyeh-wearers have been politically motivated, especially at first, it has since been picked up by everyone else because it looks cool.

A short Village Voice history of the kaffiyeh. It says the scarf started out as a political statement, but then everyone picked it up because it looks cool.

Ugly Earring’s judicious kaffiyeh links list.

Snapshots from the kaffiyeh’s ongoing metamorphosis into wallpaper:

The Hipster Intifada, a photoset on Flickr. Also, a comment on the set: History of the Object in Question, by AnomalousNYC.
Urban Outfitters Markets Kufiya as “Anti-War Woven Scarf”
The Kaffiyeh Yisraelit, if you want to be really confusing.
Mobius1ski’s talit kattan shel Shabbatai Tzvi, if you want to be even more confusing than that.
Fall 2007: Style.com and W‘s Meggan Crum declare the Ghesquiere/Balenciaga version of the kaffiyeh one of the must-have Top Ten Accessories for the year.
SobreTacones.com’s El keffiyeh de Balenciaga.
The shemagh has become a staple of military surplus resellers. A British SAS model. A Canadian forces shemagh.
Someone has to do it: HawgBlog notes the appearance of kaffiyehs on celebrities: Beckham, and Kate Moss; Sting; Colin Farrell, Kirstin Dunst, and Flavia de Oliveira for Balenciaga; Justin Timberlake at the MTV music awards; David Mamet; Lupe Fiasco (and possibly Kanye West); the amiably featherbrained Ricky Martin; an unnamed model, for Robert Geller; and Jay-Z.
Flattened into a vague 2D signifier: t-shirt pre-printed with kaffiyeh.
Approaching wallpaper: PINK WHITE SILVER STAR SCARF SHEMAGH EMO CELEB ETHNIC and RED WHITE CHERRY PRINT SCARF SHEMAGH EMO ARAB EMO, both on eBay.

Who’s more likely to be associated with terrorists? White supremacist border militia gun nuts, or some celebrity chef in a freaking paisley scarf?

Add to that Malkin’s well known book defending the internment of American citizens based on ethnicity, and you’ve got a surefire danger to the US.

The woman’s an idiot. She’d defend putting people of Arabic descent into concentration camps, but is too much of a moron to realize that there’s a large Islamic terrorist movement in the Philippines as well, and that makes her just as much of a target.