Arizona Wingnuts Outraged To Hear Muslin Word Being Used On Teevee

Arizona's fearful wingnut hordes are used to hearing many words they do not understand coming out of the teevee, but their finely tuned hate sensors picked up on one of those incomprehensible sounds recently because it had sort of a murderous jihad-y ring to it. "Haboob" is the word, an Arabic term for "dust storm" currently popular with local Arizona weather newscasters for the very obvious reason that is is fun to say "boob" on television. Weather nerd humor! But that is not at all funny to Arizona's xenophobe community, who figger this means either the Muslin God is sending all these maniacal apocalyptic doom swirls to Arizona, or the Sharia law is infiltrating our nation's cabal of weather forecasters. Which is worse? Eh, the latter. Time to write in to the editors!

The NYT reports:  

“I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob,” Don Yonts, a resident of Gilbert, Ariz., wrote the Arizona Republic after a particularly fierce, mile-high dust storm swept through the state on July 5. “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?”

Diane Robinson of Wickenburg, Ariz., agreed, saying the state’s dust storms are unique and ought to be labeled as such.

“Excuse me, Mr. Weatherman!” she said in a letter to the editor. “Who gave you the right to use the word ‘haboob’ in describing our recent dust storm? While you may think there are similarities, don’t forget that in these parts our dust is mixed with the whoop of the Indian’s dance, the progression of the cattle herd and warning of the rattlesnake as it lifts its head to strike.”

   

 REMEMBER THE TROOPS, which means they could at least use words more common to the other kind of brown people that Americans have historically been very excited to kill. [  NYT ]