The News & Observer Life, etc., section today features a story on scarves. Lots of scarves. But the one they feature in the largest photo on the section’s front page, and the only one they use on the Web version of the story, is the keffiyeh.
That’s the scarf worn by the late Yasir Arafat and adopted by wannabe revolutionaries worldwide to serve as an all-purpose, lefty, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-West bit of apparel.
The scarf’s questionable symbolic lineage, however, is never mentioned in the story or in the caption under the photo. Here’s the innocuous description used in the paper:
Black and white plaid in tissue-weight fabric adds contrast to a plain, form-fitting T-shirt.
To many readers, that’s like describing a scarf emblazoned with swastikas as containing “interesting geometrical shapes.”
Were The N&O‘s reporter and editors really clueless about the keffiyeh, or was this an effort to engage in a little subversion at the expense of some rube who would buy one and wear it unwittingly to a Jewish friend’s Hanukkah party?
