11 October 2008

Barack Osama

No, this is not a typo but rather how Barack Obama's name appears on absentee ballots being sent to voters in Rensselaer County in upstate New York. In that funny in a perverse kind of a way, the Osama that most people would know would be one Osama bin Laden.

It seems that this is just that, a typo. It does not appear that this was someone's idea of a practical joke.

According to the people who should know about these things, the elections office commissioners, Edward McDonagh and Larry Bugbee, a Democrat and a Republican, respectively, had the following to say:

"It's human error, it's very unfortunate, it's an embarrassment to our office, obviously," McDonough said in a later phone interview. "We wish we could turn back the clock, but we can't."

The remaining ballots have been shredded. However, those that have already filled in the ballots will have them counted even though there is no Barack Osama running for President. I guess this means that everyone has agreed that Barack Osama is in fact Barack Obama.

It is indeed an interesting presidential election in the good ol' US of A.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now I wonder why the words "stupid" and "american" were most-searched in Google

Elyani said...

"b" and "s" is one row apart and there's a 7cm distance, where did they hire the this stupid typist from? I don't think it was an innocent mistake.

Rob Baiton said...

Writer...

Are they? I did not know that.

Elyani...

See I did not even think to take the time to measure that.

Who knows on the innocent mistake front.

Anonymous said...

*Remembering "good ol' New Order".*

No, it is not typo. It is ignorance and stewpiditee. Even here in Indo they must change them or anger raise accompanied with burning KPUD office. Looks like the effect of economic crisis does bring USA to the developING countries league.

Rob Baiton said...

Jaka...

I tend to think it is a typo. I guess though that is me trying to convince myself that someone could not be so silly on purpose.

No comment on the rest of your comment.

Anonymous said...

i really believe it's a typo, and also obama hasn't advertised enough.
i think what this means is that the word "osama", and not "obama" is more popular in people's subconscious.

(kinda like associating cloth freshener with "febreeze", or at least in indonesia tooth paste with "odol", and detergent with "rinso", etc... the string of o-ama is associated with an 's' rather than a 'b'.)

(although b always comes before s in a dictionary, and if you put them together it goes...... er... neways)

more viral marketing by the obama camp are in order, i guess.

Rob Baiton said...

Hentzer...

I would like to believe that it is an honest typographical error. Yet, there are still those that believe that Obama is a Muslim and perhaps consciously or otherwise this typo was bound to happen sooner or later.

Viral marketing...I was thinking of exploring this viral marketing thing as a means of attracting traffic to my blog.