This is infuriating and it really made me lose major faith in America.

Recently, Dunkin' Donuts pulled an online ad that they had produced featuring Rachael Ray promoting their coffee. Conservatives and right-wing bloggers (AKA Michelle Malkin) were in an uproar because they claimed that the Dunkin' Donuts ad demonstrated "symbolic support for terrorism". Let's take a look at a still from the ad and try to spot this so-called "symbolic terrorism"...



Give up? It's her scarf. Yep. Conservatives complained that the scarf Ray is wearing looks like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress, which they argue has come to "symbolize" Muslim extremism and terrorism.

You know, my teachers used to tell me that we learned about the history of the United States so we don't repeat it, but apparently either these people fell asleep during history class, or we need a new way of teaching it, because I'm seeing history being repeated right before my eyes.

The Cold War: everyone becomes terrified of Communists, and anyone who dares criticize the American government is suddenly deemed a loyal follower of Marx and Lenin.

World War II: we literally put all Japanese-Americans into camps, because we are so irrationally frightened of "what they might do."

Today: we exercise racist ideals by associating anything Muslim with terrorism... to the point where a harmless scarf on a commercial can be considered "letting the terrorists win."

Amahl Bishara of the University of Chicago sums it up by saying:

"I think that a right-wing blogger making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S. Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East -- by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm."

Not only are the right-wing bloggers blowing an innocent advertisement completely out of proportion, but they are perpetuating the notion that all Muslims are terrorists. Let's say Rachael Ray did get that scarf at a bizarre in Palestine... SO WHAT? Are we such a narrow-minded country that we reject anything associated with Palestine because of a few select people who decide to engage in terrorist tactics? What about the rest of the population who completely disagree with terrorism? They wear kaffiyehs too!

Please, Michelle Malkin, pry your mind open just a little bit.