Don't forget that calling Bush a monkey wasn't racist either. It's OK to compare whites to monkeys, but comparing blacks to monkeys is unacceptable. Iranians? They're kinda dark I guess... better play it safe.
Our country has gotten way too anal about this PC bullshit and going overboard to classify everything as racism. My fiancee was telling me that her boss got into an hour-long conversation with someone based on the contention that the Superbowl commercial with the white guy speaking in a Jamaican accent was racist because... I don't even know why. There are white people who live in the Caribbean who talk like that. But no, couldn't be. If you don't fit into a culture that jives with my assumptions about what you should sound like based on your skin color, it's because you're racist. I tell you, this country...
And incidentally, I understand why comparing blacks to monkeys is racist, given that there was a long history of that happening in the United States and it was used as a "legitimate" justification for treating blacks as inferior to whites. I don't believe we have that same history with middle easterners. So why is this racist as opposed to just generic rudeness?