NEW ORLEANS -- Cajuns have long since learned to cope with being stereotyped as backward swamp-dwelling caricatures, but a phrase coined by national media outlets this week got their Tabasco-laden blood boiling.
The words "Cajun Taliban" and "Ragin' Cajun" were used by ABC Radio and Time magazine in reference to Yasser Esam Hamdi, the second American suspected of joining with Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan.
Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge to Saudi Arabian parents.
The labeling of Hamdi as somehow one of their own provoked an outpouring of outrage in Acadiana, the heart of Louisiana's Cajun country.
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