From the Archives: Crosses and Crescents and Memorials, Oh My...
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I was doing really well in my quest not to know exactly who Rachel Ray was. Something about kitchens and television. That's it.
So much for my willful obliviousness:
It's a scarf. Deal with it. Or better yet: don't deal with it (i.e., just shut up).
This inane kerfuffle reminds me of some similar idiocy a while back over the Flight 93 National Memorial. I chronicled the stupidity in a 12 September 2005 post titled, "Crosses and Crescents and Memorials, Oh My..."
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Some very silly bloggers are all in a huff about the memorial for the victims of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11.
The problem is that the memorial is called the "Crescent of Embrace." The psychosis is that some conspiracy theorists are convinced that the memorial actually projects the Islamic Qibla, the direction to face when praying to Mecca:
Sorry, I don't see it. The supposed Qibla doesn't bisect the ring, or even the portion truncated by True North. What exactly are the conspiracy theorists seeing?
The designer insists that the orientation was based on an attempt to maximize the length of time that sunlight shines inside the memorial.
Here's the sad part of this whole debate: It's not even a crescent — it's a broken ring, a fragment of a circle. A crescent goes from a point to a thicker width to a point. This isn't that. (Note: Apparently "crescent" is a generic architectural term that in fact means any curve; an Islamic-style "crescent" is more correctly referred to as a "lunar crescent.")
Perhaps it was indelicate, even foolish, to name the memorial the "Crescent of Embrace" in the first place. I would not have voted for that name. But a grand, subversive, Islamic sick joke?
As comedian Lewis Black has noted, the single biggest problem with Islamofascists is that they don't have a sense of humor. Why are we losing ours?
POST SCRIPT: New Orleans is the "Crescent City." Discuss.
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The National Park Service capitualated to the whackos and tinkered with the design of the Memorial; the whackos were not satisfied and to this day continue to screech about the design, the number of memorial stones, the number of windows, whatever they can concoct to feed their paranoia.
Dunkin Donuts capitulated and scrapped the Rachel Ray ad. You know the whackos will not be satisfied and will continue to screech about something. It is their raison d'etre. Maybe they'll be lucky and learn that Dunkin Donuts sponsors gay pride events.
In the meantime, at least I still don't really know who David Archuleta is.
So much for my willful obliviousness:
Dunkin' Donuts pulled a television spot featuring talk show host and Food Network personality Rachael Ray this weekend after a Fox news commentator associated it with terrorists.Ah yes, Michelle Malkin, the radical conservative bigot who has turned celebrating two-digit IQs and eighth-grade educations into an art form — or fashion statement, as the case may be.
In the ad, Ray is wearing a scarf that Michelle Malkin said in her nationally syndicated column resembled a kiffiyeh, Middle Eastern garb that is "popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos."
It's a scarf. Deal with it. Or better yet: don't deal with it (i.e., just shut up).
This inane kerfuffle reminds me of some similar idiocy a while back over the Flight 93 National Memorial. I chronicled the stupidity in a 12 September 2005 post titled, "Crosses and Crescents and Memorials, Oh My..."
---
Some very silly bloggers are all in a huff about the memorial for the victims of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11.
The problem is that the memorial is called the "Crescent of Embrace." The psychosis is that some conspiracy theorists are convinced that the memorial actually projects the Islamic Qibla, the direction to face when praying to Mecca:
Sorry, I don't see it. The supposed Qibla doesn't bisect the ring, or even the portion truncated by True North. What exactly are the conspiracy theorists seeing?
The designer insists that the orientation was based on an attempt to maximize the length of time that sunlight shines inside the memorial.
Here's the sad part of this whole debate: It's not even a crescent — it's a broken ring, a fragment of a circle. A crescent goes from a point to a thicker width to a point. This isn't that. (Note: Apparently "crescent" is a generic architectural term that in fact means any curve; an Islamic-style "crescent" is more correctly referred to as a "lunar crescent.")
Perhaps it was indelicate, even foolish, to name the memorial the "Crescent of Embrace" in the first place. I would not have voted for that name. But a grand, subversive, Islamic sick joke?
As comedian Lewis Black has noted, the single biggest problem with Islamofascists is that they don't have a sense of humor. Why are we losing ours?
POST SCRIPT: New Orleans is the "Crescent City." Discuss.
---
The National Park Service capitualated to the whackos and tinkered with the design of the Memorial; the whackos were not satisfied and to this day continue to screech about the design, the number of memorial stones, the number of windows, whatever they can concoct to feed their paranoia.
Dunkin Donuts capitulated and scrapped the Rachel Ray ad. You know the whackos will not be satisfied and will continue to screech about something. It is their raison d'etre. Maybe they'll be lucky and learn that Dunkin Donuts sponsors gay pride events.
In the meantime, at least I still don't really know who David Archuleta is.
Related Posts (on one page):
- From the Archives: Crosses and Crescents and Memorials, Oh My...
- Flight 93 Memorial Succumbs to "Crescent" Paranoia
- Crosses and Crescents and Memorials, Oh My...
Posted by Kip on
29 May 2008
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