Tuesday’s class discussion really got me thinking about the media and how (some) stories of today are more focused around hype – think Hillary Clinton sparking an assassination – than any real content. Then, as if on purpose, I ran across this article on a recent Dunkin Donuts ad – yep, donuts are now making national news – which features Rachael Ray in a black and white scarf, similar, some say, to those worn by Palestinian terrorists. I’m sorry, am I mistaken or do we not live in a country where freedom – and that includes the freedom to wear a scarf of any color – is key?

To begin this argument, let’s, for a second, take a quick look at the Bill of Rights – the very document that helped to create America, to make it a place where all of its people could be free from discrimination, regardless of their religious, political or moral beliefs. To see evidence of this you don’t have to read very far, the first amendment prohibits the establishment of a specific religion and the oppression of speech. So, why, in a country so ingrained in freedom, so founded in the principles that we are all equal, would a Dunkin Donut ad be pulled from the media?

Michelle Malkin, conservative commentator and journalist, wrote a recent post about the ad on her blog

“The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. 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.”

In all of her talk about how these types of scarves have been a part of the anti-Israel movement and how they could, in a sense, portray Dunkin Donuts and Rachael Ray as being terrorist sympathizers, she seems, to me, to have missed a pretty important point.

Yes, maybe the Palestinian terrorists have worn these types of scarves, but in the same breath so have thousands of non-terrorist Palestinians in the country.

“It was so ubiquitous in the 19th century—in the Arab Peninsula, in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan—that British and French colonists took to wearing it for its comforts and distinctive look, just as students in coldish France and England, who couldn’t care less about its political threads, these days wear it for its warmth and fashionable malleability…”

This quote then brings us back to the First Amendment. Regardless of whether Dunkin Donuts was just trying to be stylish or if they were trying to sympathize with the sort of scarf-wearers that Malkin says, in America, they have a right to do so.

Frankly, I own a scarf made of a similar material, with fringe on the end and I’m not a part of any sort of terrorist organization, but according to Malkin if I wore it, and I do–a lot–I would be. In this sense, what she attempted–and succeeded–at doing was limiting a freedom for no other reason than the possibility that maybe Dunkin Donuts was a terrorist sympathizing corporation.

But I doubt it is.

And I think that most Americans are knowledgeable enough to be aware of that. Maybe its time to focus on real news, on things that actually might be a threat to our country and our freedom rather than berating a stylist who just wanted a celebrity to appear trendy in a commercial for donuts and coffee.