Obamorabilia: Commemorative Newspapers

Barack Obama will go down in history for, among other things, being the president who lent his image to the most merchandise. If his economic stimulus doesn't work, hopefully at least Americans will buy enough Obama-themed objects to put the economy back on track. Obamathon Man chronicles the popular trends, the quirky deviations and the utterly tasteless byproducts of Obama mania in a series known as Obamorabilia.

First up: commemorative newspapers. You've all seen them at some point. You may even have been one of those folks who bought a chunk of newspapers on Nov. 5. Yes, newspaper sales that day went waaaay up, and the paper companies sensed an opportunity to make extra bucks on this trend. Ideally, they would have had Barack Obama elected again the next day, but since that was kinda unconstitutional, they did the next best thing: commemorative editions! Here in Los Angeles, the LA times made available all kinds of collectible goodies: original copies of the newspaper, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and "authentic" aluminum plates of the front page. As of mid-December, they are all still available, but you better buy em now! They might run out, or Tribune co. might just pull the plug on the poor old Times. Obamathon man is too lazy to go city by city to check for whether commemorative papers are still available elsewhere, but you can do it yourself. I have a feeling plenty of other papers nationwide are willing to cash in.