Afghanistan After Bin Laden: Some Lawmakers Want the War to End
With just one letter difference between "Osama" and "Obama," confusing the names of the President and the United States's sworn enemy is easy if unfortunate to make. Anyone producing lots of words to cover the story of bin Laden's death has probably made the typo at least once today and the number of typos and flubs to be published and broadcast has already been well-cataloged. Last night MSNBC's Noah O'Donnell reported on Twitter that "Obama" had been "killed" instead of Osama. Even more embarrassingly, so did an anchor on D.C.'s local Fox affiliate while covering Obama's speech.
Of course, for years there have been plenty of very intentional uses of the Obama-Osama rhyme scheme as Obama's detractors liked to link him with the terrorist mastermind with a range of stickers, T-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers all suggesting that there is some affinity between the two.
But today an interesting development is underway. In the internet's economy of instant memorabilia, the link between Obama and Osama is now being embraced by Obama supporters (or at least the people thinking up tchotchke's for the President's supporters to buy). There is no doubt that Obama and Osama will now be linked for the foreseeable future. But it's now a bond Obama will likely be touting rather than evading. Here's a selection of Obama-Osama merchandising popping up across the Web.
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John Hudson
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