# I'm REALLY sick of people "accidentally" calling Obama "Osama." **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 19, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178 "2008-01-19T19:04:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/1 "2008-01-19T19:04:53Z")
[And](http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/romney-makes-obama-osama-gaffe/) [it](http://mediamatters.org/items/200507120008) [keeps](http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/radio/obama_called_osama_again_74690.asp) [fucking](http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/23/osama-obama-omissions/) [happening](http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200708080002). Look, if a newscaster can lose his job over a legitimate [slip of the tongue](http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jan-17-Mon-2005/news/25678882.html), I can’t accept so many people making this “mistake.” I’m no believer in the two-party system, and I have little or no preference out of the current candidates, but this is nothing more than an intentional way to associate Obama with “scary foreign-sounding stuff!” on behalf of the corporate/conservative mainstream media. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/2 "2008-01-19T19:13:51Z")
Barak **Hussein** Osama. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/3 "2008-01-19T19:15:34Z")
> [@article](#): > > Blair was delivering the extended forecast when he said, “For tomorrow, 60 degrees, Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Day, gonna see some temperatures in the mid-60s.” > > About 20 minutes later, Blair told viewers at the ABC affiliate, “Apparently I accidentally said Martin Luther Kong Jr., which I apologize about – slip of the tongue.” I’m counting two slips of the tongue here. Was the “Kong” remark something he actually said, or was that a slip-up made by the journalist? ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/4 "2008-01-19T19:37:35Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] I’m counting two slips of the tongue here. Was the “Kong” remark something he actually said, or was that a slip-up made by the journalist? [/QUOTE] From all evidence, it looks like on-air he said “Coon” and afterward tried to cover by saying he’d uttered “Kong,” _something like_ “King” and, in his thinking, similar enough in sound _to him_ to “Coon” for his contrived excuse. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/5 "2008-01-19T19:48:59Z")
“Kong” is bad too, though. The whole gorilla thing. Accident or not, I can’t blame the station for firing him. As for the Obama thing, unfortunately I have made the slip up. It’s kind of excusable when Obama and Osama are regularly in the news. But Romney really takes the cake. ---
**Author:** ![hopesperson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e95f7d/32.png) [@hopesperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hopesperson)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/6 "2008-01-19T19:57:19Z")
Two of your links refer to the same Romney incident back in October – maybe a mistake, maybe not. Who knows? But it doesn’t seem to have amounted to much one way or the other. One of them refers to Doug Limerick, an ABC radio news reporter. I’m not aware that he has any specific bias; embarrassing, but probably not intentional. And the other two refer to right wing talk radio blowhards. Neither of them is even claiming it was “accidental.” If this is as big an epidemic as you make it out to be, your links don’t do much in the way of demonstrating it. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/7 "2008-01-19T20:03:48Z")
[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting] From all evidence, it looks like on-air he said “Coon” and afterward tried to cover by saying he’d uttered “Kong,” _something like_ “King” and, in his thinking, similar enough in sound _to him_ to “Coon” for his contrived excuse. [/QUOTE] I have seen this many times and I still think it is a crock that he got in trouble for this. Seems to me that his tongue got ahead of his eyes on the teleprompter. He sort of slid King and Junior together and it started to come out Kunior but he stopped and tried to correct which made it worse. I might be wrong, I don’t know what is in his head but thats what it seemed like when I saw it. ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-really-sick-of-people-accidentally-calling-obama-osama/434178/8 "2008-01-19T20:17:05Z")
[QUOTE=Loach] I have seen this many times and I still think it is a crock that he got in trouble for this. Seems to me that his tongue got ahead of his eyes on the teleprompter. He sort of slid King and Junior together and it started to come out Kunior but he stopped and tried to correct which made it worse. I might be wrong, I don’t know what is in his head but thats what it seemed like when I saw it. [/QUOTE] I agree that this could also be correct. However, he should have just said what you did (“I got tongue-tied”) and left it at that. What he came up with just sounds contrived and, like **monstro** said, might be just as bad as “Coon.”