UPDATE: Obama Sock Puppet Controversy Continues!!!

Well, Blog Pals, looks like old Andrew jumped the gun (for the umpteenth time). You may recall my Obama Sock Puppet post from the other day (see below) about David and Elizabeth Lawson of West Jordan, Utah, and the uproar they caused with their monkey puppet of Senator Barack Obama. A headline in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune said it all: "Creators of The Sock Obama seek new company to produce doll." So it looks like Sock Obama is back. Apparently, the Lawsons are selling him on a new Website called Sock Politicians (click here to see it). Turns out they're also selling a Sock McCain (pictured here). It's hard to say why the Lawsons had a change of heart. In a really, really weird statement, the Lawsons said, "In the good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism, free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America." Huh??? The statement gets even more bizarre: "Last we heard, a posse of bloggers from back East are on their way over to conduct - how did they phrase it? - a good ol' fashioned KKK house burning party at David and Elizabeth's. Kinda exciting stuff, but this in America?"

What the hell? They lost me at "good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism."

Not surprisingly, members of the Salt Lake City branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are fuming. Charles Henderson, an African American Democratic candidate for the Utah House of Representatives from the town of Kearns, posed the question, "After you've been told it's not acceptable, why do you pursue this unless it's motivated by financial gain, notoriety or some other more malicious path that you're trying to take?"

Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to give the Lawsons the benefit of the doubt. And maybe, just maybe, the Lawsons were inspired by those Bloggers who insisted that Sock Obama will one day be a collector's item. Who knows? Interestingly, for you Canadian readers, there is a Canadian angle to the story. Originally, before the outcry erupted, the Lawsons had worked out a deal with Brinkley Custom Toys of Hamilton, Ontario, to manufacture Sock Obama. The folks at Brinkley got cold feet when the poop hit the fan.

Stay tuned, Blog pals. I think Sock Obama just got his second wind.

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