Now I Know: It’s “Potatobama”

Update: Commenter Matthew Archbold has led me to the source of the Barack Obama potato: Creative Minority Report. This is from their mini-manifesto: “We intend to comment on Church related issues as it relates to its transformation, now begun, into a lean and mean evangelization machine.” The site’s motto is: “We Laugh Because We Believe.”

Archbold blogs for Creative Minority Report and it seems as if he is the person who posted, and presumably wrote, the story about this tater. According to the entry, 17-year-old Earl Jr. spotted a “dude” on the potato that his mother was about to eat. Earl Sr. asked if it was Jesus. Jr. said it was Obama. Now, Mom has dreams where Obama keeps repeating the word “change” but when she asks what it means, he just keeps saying the word. The little parody concludes: “None of the Dixons have voted in any of the past eight elections but promise that this time they'll vote for Obama. They're also considering selling the Potatobama on Ebay.”

This story reads like something out of The Onion, but it gels with Creative Minority Report’s self-proclaimed purpose: to comment about the Church’s “transformation.” The commodification of the divine and purportedly divine must be an aspect of that. This text is laced with all the frills of the stories I relay to you on this very blog: eBay, dreams, changed behavior. This family has never voted – no different from the many people who discover religious iconography but don’t attend church or pray. Even the critique of Senator Obama, suggesting that he does nothing but speak the word “change” over and over again. Are certain of the leaders of the Church only saying and not doing? Is this a result of the “lean and mean evangelization machine”?

I don’t know much about how this “transformation” is viewed by various people inside the Church and I know nothing about Church leadership, so maybe I am misinterpreting the Obama reference. But I give Creative Minority Report credit for getting me to think about it by using a face of a Presidential candidate on a potato.

Thanks for the lead, Matthew!