Atari jamboree

This is utterly beside the point, but part of my reaction to the story

yesterday of an anti-American domestic terrorist militia outfit calling
itself Hutaree had to do with what struck me as the inappropriateness of
that made-up name itself.

The initial reports I heard all pronounced the word HUTT-ah-REE — which is what seems called for based on that double e ending.

And that just seemed off.

There aren't a whole lot of words in the
English language that follow this form of three syllables ending in "ee"
with accents on the first and last syllables. And in just about every other
case these words are happier in meaning.

Jubilee, for instance.
Or jamboree.

Shivaree. Galilee. Apogee. Fricassee. Guarantee. Filagree. Dungaree. Chimpanzee.

Bumblebee.

None
of these have negative or sinister implications, really.

I mean, we
can create less happy words by tacking an "-ee" suffix onto
unpleasant verbs — abductee,  for example — but as far as standalone
words go, the BA-dum-DEE formulation generally conveys a sense of
something delightful rather than something frightfully stupid and
violent like the Hutaree.

But then today on NPR, Robert Siegel offered a different pronunciation: huh-TAR-ee.

So, OK, that sounds a bit more appropriate as a name for this group. But if that's how it's supposed to be pronounced, then I think they're spelling it wrong. It seems to me that saying it that way requires spelling it with an i on the end. Hutari. No, wait, that looks to me like hoo-TAR-ee. How about Huttari? (I'm sure there's an applicable phonetic rule governing such things — anyone know what it is?)

That double-e ending just seems too endearing and friendly for a group that has declared itself America's enemee, er, enemy. I just have a hard time feeling appropriately menaced by names ending in ee.

John Pertwee.

See what I mean?

But feel free to disagree.