Hurricane Names

It is hurricane season again in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. I think one of the worst changes made in the name of political correctness was to change the hurricane naming procedure from naming all hurricanes after women to alternating names between women and men’s names. Think of the killer, devastating hurricanes of the past: Katrina, Camille, Agnes and Wilma. These monster storms sound frightening. “Hurricane Camille”. Doesn’t that name just conjure up images of howling winds, crashing seas, horizontal rain, and cows and mobile homes flying through the sky? You know the phrase, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. These female named storms sound like hell have no fury.

The current hurricane is “Hurricane Bill”. Oh please, Hurricane Bill? That sounds like Farmer Bob, Captain Jack, Captain Kangaroo, Yosemite Sam or Uncle Festus. Hurricane Bob sounds like our friend. “See you Mom, I will be back later, I am going over to Hurricane Bill’s house.” Your mom would respond with “OK honey, don’t be late, dinner’s at 5:00”. But tell your mom you are going over to Hurricane Camille’s house and she will undoubtedly say, “No way buster, you are staying home tonight”.

Hurricane Bill sounds like an old man sipping on tall rum drinks in the New Orleans’ French Quarter. Kind of a breezy smile and twinkling eyes, listening to Dixieland jazz.

I know, you might be thinking that there was Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Hugo, but face it, Hugo as in Hugo Boss, is in the fashion industry and Andrew, as in Andrew Lloyd Webber, wrote the song “Memories”. So these two hurricanes were not truly manly names but were androgynous storms, could be masculine, could be feminine.

Even the word “hurricane” (pronounced "her" a cane) makes reference to the female. The word is not "him" a cane.

Since our congress and administration are not spending a lot of time fixing the health care system but are spending a lot of time taking shots at each other and a lot of money on clunker cars, I suggest we contact them and tell them to change the hurricane naming procedure back to where it was. Maybe they will jump on this and spend some time doing meaningful work. Maybe there will be a consensus that this is a nice thing for bi-partisan cooperation. No, I am sure my fellow democrats will be frightened to appear politically incorrect not wanting to offend women, men, or transgender Americans and the republicans will not want to appear to be cooperating with a president who was born in Guam, the Philippines, Africa, Hawaii or all of the above. Maybe he was not born at all, he just showed up one day.

Ok, leave it as it is. I can hardly wait for Hurricane St. Francis of Assisi and Hurricane Mother Teresa.