With apologies to Ira Gershwin…

You say Al-KAY-da
And I say Al-KEYE-da
You say Osama
And I say Obama
Al-KAY-da, Al-KEYE-da
Osama, Obama
Let’s call the whole thing off.

The “whole thing” could be defined in numerous ways I suppose, but I prefer to think of it as a reference to the conflict in Iraq.

“Obama” is, of course, Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Illinois who spoke so eloquently at the Democratic convention last week. Even the Financial Times published an article about him this weekend under the headline A Democrat star is born.

You can find out more about this new star in an article published in The New Yorker in May (see The Candidate by William Finnegan) and it seems I wasn’t the only one to notice a certain similiarity in his last name:

[Democratic Congresswoman] Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’”

Looks like Schakowsky was right.