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My idea is a chain of Barack Obama outlet stores — warm, friendly, one-stop-shopping places where the joy of election night will linger forever. Trader O’s would make a nice name. At a Trader O’s the counters would groan under the weight of all the magnificent collectibles of the ’08 crusade . For instance, the front page of the Tuesday Sun-Times announces, “COMING TOMORROW! Free Obama Collectors Print,” the second in a series.” These are “high-quality 8-by-10 photos…suitable for framing.” But perhaps you failed to buy the paper offering the first in the series. Fear not. The whole collection would be yours at Trader O’s.
Want something a bit more upscale? Consider the “Barack Obama Presidential Commemorative,” available in “pure silver clad” or “24 Karat Gold layered Edition”? These precious coiny-looking things produced in “limited release” by the Washington Monetary Authority, each with its own Individually Numbered Certificate of Authenticity, might be hard to get your hands on any other way, but they’d be stocked at Trader O’s. And so would Change in America, the “striking and realistic portrait of President-Elect Barack Obama delivering one of his most moving and impactful speeches” that artist Christopher Shannon kindly alerted me to by email.
