Coffee Controversies

• Why did Dunkin Donuts pull this ad featuring Rachel Ray and her scarf? [HP]
• Patrick Swayze says he's responding well to treatment. No jokes, just sending good vibes his way. [People]
• Fans of Indiana Jones have too much time on their hands if they've already pointed out 40 mistakes since the movie's release last weekend. [ICYDK]
• Just as expected, Pete Doherty has killed one of his cats. Where the hell is PETA in all this? [DListed]
• Today's portion of the R. Kelly trial will deal with threesomes that may or may not involve an underage child. Good clean fun. [SH]
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The whole flap about the scarf started on super pro-Israel crazy Pamela Geller's blog. Malkin picked it up because they both see eeeeevil Muslims hiding everywhere. . . EVEN IN COFFEE COMMERCIALS. Of course, there are several blogs that have posted images of McCain's daughter wearing a similar scarf, but they aren't outraged about that because they can't really accuse McCain of being a terrorist sympathizer. If they did, there would be problems. Naturally, those problems wouldn't be as big as Phil Gramm's shady connections to UBS, but still, perception tends to still be everything in Presidential politics.
Dunkin Donuts should have told Michelle Malkin to stick it.
"Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness."
Yes, its much better to bend people to your view of American political correctness. It was a freaking scarf for christ sakes. I doubt any sane person saw the ad and thought, WOW, Dunkin Donuts supports jihad, maybe I should go to Krispy Kreme. Thats like seeing someone in an ad wearing red or blue and thinking they support bloods and crips.
Dunkin Donuts should to cut off her supply of iced coffee and munchkins.
For those of you playing the home version of MollyGood, I would have said the exact same thing if it had been a left wing nut job. I highly doubt Malkin really gives a rats ass about this, it's just a way to throw her weight around and get publicity.
i'm more offended by rachel ray; the scarf not so much.
"For those of you playing the home version of MollyGood,"
Oh, keeblerkahn!! I was this close to having diet dr. pepper shooting out my nose. Well played. :-)
Keeblerkahn, if you don't get a Commie™ next week for that… Well, then the terrorists have won.
Why can't people understand that the whole point of the scarf was to make Rachel Ray appear to have a neck?
I was going to say that I was mostly annoyed at how the scarf was tied. But then I noticed one could pull each of the ends, and well - think back to Jungle Book, "truuuuussst in meeeeeee."
Scarfgate 2008 is just so ridiculous. How do you throw your weight behind that and not feel too embarassed to sleep at night?
That being said next time my boy, who loves Dunking Dognuts(they do make good coffee), wants to hit up DD, I will say, "Dunkin Donuts supports jihad, we should go to Krispy Kreme." Thanks Keebs!
genius, keebler.
michelle malkin went to my college… oberlin.
do you know how fucked up you have to be to graduate from oberlin and become the right wing asshat that she has become?
i should have killed her in the face when i saw her at the drum circle back in 90 whatever. except i was on acid and she looked like a puppy. i can't kill a puppy in the face. even a rightwing asshat puppy.
So here I am sidetracked by the whole "a scarf is sometimes just a scarf" issue.
Pete D buried one of his kittens along side the road on his way to a concert. Yes, peta, what about it?
When they do come out with the MollyGood home version, I call dibs on the little dog.
I think it may also be worth noting that the keffiyah has been traditionally worn by Palestinian men regardless of their faith, so not just by Muslims (there are many Palestinian Christians as well), which makes the idea that anybody who wears it supports "jihad" seem even more hysterical and ridiculous. It makes much more sense to see it as a symbol of nationalism rather than anything to do specifically with Islam.
Patrick Swayze’s New TV Series Will Proceed Despite His Cancer
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By BILL CARTER
Published: June 7, 2008
Patrick Swayze, who only a few months ago was found to have a life-threatening case of pancreatic cancer, has recovered enough that his planned drama series for the A&E network will go into production this summer, with him in the starring role.
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Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press
Patrick Swayze at a basketball game last month in Los Angeles.
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Times Topics: Patrick SwayzeExecutives from A&E and Sony Pictures Television, the studio producing the show, said on Friday that based on reports from Mr. Swayze and his doctors, they had made the decision to go forward with the series, “The Beast,” in which Mr. Swayze plays an F.B.I. agent with a checkered past.
In an e-mail message on Friday, Mr. Swayze said, “I can’t wait to get to work on this.”
Mr. Swayze shot the pilot in January, and A&E was only a day away from announcing the decision to go ahead with the series when he called in March to deliver the news that he was gravely ill.
“It’s amazing, it’s inspiring, and it’s almost unprecedented,” said Zack Van Amburg, the co-president of Sony’s television studio. The precedent he said the studio and network had clung to as a slim hope was the recovery of Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, who had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004.
Bob DeBitetto, the executive vice president and general manager of A&E, said of Mr. Swayze, “Obviously we’ve had candid conversations with him and his doctors, and we have a fairly high degree of expectation that Patrick will be good to work a full production schedule.”
He added, “No one is using words like cured or remission or miracle.” But he said that the course of treatment, which included some conventional chemotherapy along with more experimental drugs, had blunted the disease sufficiently for Mr. Swayze to return to work.
That had not been the expectation, as least according to much of the coverage of Mr. Swayze’s condition in entertainment publications. That coverage included ominous predictions about his fate, based largely on the dim survival rates for people with pancreatic cancer.
But Mr. Swayze himself told two Sony studio executives, Mr. Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, that he would find a way to beat back the cancer because he was committed to playing the part in “The Beast.”
“He was very passionate about the role,” Mr. Erlicht said. “He called us personally after he got the news and he told us: ‘Guys, I have some horrible news. But if you can be patient and stand by me, I’m going to come back and do the show.’ ”
Mr. Swayze, 55, had no special medical reason to cite for his confidence. “But he talked about the work he does on his ranch,” Mr. Van Amburg said. “He said: ‘I’m in great condition. I’m a cowboy. I’m a dancer. I’ll beat this.’ ”
In his e-mail message, Mr. Swayze did not comment about his condition. He said of his decision to go ahead with the role, “I have searched for quite a long time to find a character that is this mutilayered, unpredictable and downright entertaining, as well as a project this current and cutting-edged.”
“The Beast” had been proposed as one of the potential shows for A&E’s planned re- entry into the business of scripted television. Mr. DeBitetto said the network was enthusiastic about the idea, which owed something in its conception to the Denzel Washington film “Training Day.” Like that film, its center was to be a buddy-cop situation, with Mr. Swayze playing the veteran detective tutoring a newcomer, played by Travis Fimmel, in some of the regular and irregular crime-fighting methods employed by the F.B.I.
“Of course we knew Patrick from some of his iconic film roles,” Mr. DeBitetto said, referring to movies like “Ghost” and “Dirty Dancing.” But he has worked only sporadically in recent years. “The Beast” will be his first television series.
Both the Sony and A&E executives conceded that they had talked about the possibility that the role might have to be recast. “Of course that was on people’s minds,” Mr. DeBitetto said. “But everybody who saw the pilot said that Patrick Swayze was amazing in the part.”
Mr. Erlicht said: “A Plan B and a Plan C were loosely discussed. But we realized we had a potential hit show, and our plan was to see it through. There were no tangible plans for Plan B or C.”
The production process is not making any concessions to Mr. Swayze’s condition, Mr. Van Amburg said. The show will still be shot in Chicago as planned, which means Mr. Swayze will be far from his doctors, who are based at Stanford University in California. They will monitor him closely, aided by doctors in Chicago. His course of treatment is likely to continue throughout the four months of shooting, which will probably begin in August.
Though one executive involved in the production suggested that the series might be reshaped to inflate the supporting part played by Mr. Fimmel, Mr. Van Amburg said the three or four new scripts that had been prepared had not been changed to make Mr. Swayze’s character less important. “The honest truth is we have an obligation to the writers, to ourselves and to the network to make the best show possible,” he said.
But that does not mean the series will go forward no matter how Mr. Swayze may be feeling. “If anything we do in any way hinders Patrick’s recovery, we’re not doing it,” Mr. Erlicht said. But, he added, “We’re extremely confident we’re making the right decision.”
The network also has no reservations. “We think we’re doing the right thing on a lot of levels, including the karmic level,” Mr. DeBitetto said.
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