Dateline ... Fakeline
Obama or O-bomb-a?
September 1, 2008
New York, New York
Dirk Dickley, Associate Press
Just days after accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Senator Barak Obama came feet away from being apprehended under suspicions that he was connected with terrorist activities. Yesterday evening, officers from Homeland Security entered a Manhattan fundraising event for the senator with the intent to detain him under the Patriot Act when they received countermanding orders at the last minute. Senator Obama's only comments on the incident were that John McCain should be honored for the suffering he endured defending his country and that Hilary Clinton held all his respect and ran a historic campaign.
It later came to light that what set Homeland Security agents moments away from apprehending the first African American presidential nominee from a major party was a bizarre confusion of intelligence.
"I said he was da' bomb, da' bomb! Damn!" This claim from Harlem resident, Reginald Kwame, a.k.a. Poochy, Dickers. "Da' bomb" is African American slang made popular in the 1990s indicating that a subject is the upmost in its field, the zenith, the ultimate.
"The phrase is easy enough to parse," says Dr. Wendell J. Witkins, Professor of Urban Linguistics at Columbia University and author of the book, Hip Hop: How It Became Hip When Hardly Anyone Likes to Hop. "'Da' is the article "the" in either reflexive or affected dialect. And "bomb" refers to something powerfully exciting or explosive. One is reminded of the phrase from the entertainment community 'to blow up big' meaning to become very successful and famous, very quickly. The identification of a bomb's power -- clearly an artifact of our post-atomic culture -- as a superlative positive is the same. Now there is speculation that 'bomb' has also had a life as 'a large stash of drugs' but this meaning hasn't penetrated enough into the general populace to be the cause of any confusion. Generally the intent in the use of the phrase should be clear."
"How the Hell am I supposed to know what they mean?" said Homeland Security New York Bureau Chief Chester Bilby. "We got what seemed like reliable intel and we went with it. They all sound alike to me anyway."
Civil Rights Leader Al Shapton was quick to express concern on a larger scale. "I want to know how many young brothers are sitting in Guantanamo Bay right now for having once casually said that they thought George W. Bush was 'da' bomb!'"
The Department of Homeland Security was quick to reassure reporters that in eight years of intelligence gathering they had never uncovered any young African American males referring to the President in that way.
September 1, 2008
New York, New York
Dirk Dickley, Associate Press
Just days after accepting the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Senator Barak Obama came feet away from being apprehended under suspicions that he was connected with terrorist activities. Yesterday evening, officers from Homeland Security entered a Manhattan fundraising event for the senator with the intent to detain him under the Patriot Act when they received countermanding orders at the last minute. Senator Obama's only comments on the incident were that John McCain should be honored for the suffering he endured defending his country and that Hilary Clinton held all his respect and ran a historic campaign.
It later came to light that what set Homeland Security agents moments away from apprehending the first African American presidential nominee from a major party was a bizarre confusion of intelligence.
"I said he was da' bomb, da' bomb! Damn!" This claim from Harlem resident, Reginald Kwame, a.k.a. Poochy, Dickers. "Da' bomb" is African American slang made popular in the 1990s indicating that a subject is the upmost in its field, the zenith, the ultimate.
"The phrase is easy enough to parse," says Dr. Wendell J. Witkins, Professor of Urban Linguistics at Columbia University and author of the book, Hip Hop: How It Became Hip When Hardly Anyone Likes to Hop. "'Da' is the article "the" in either reflexive or affected dialect. And "bomb" refers to something powerfully exciting or explosive. One is reminded of the phrase from the entertainment community 'to blow up big' meaning to become very successful and famous, very quickly. The identification of a bomb's power -- clearly an artifact of our post-atomic culture -- as a superlative positive is the same. Now there is speculation that 'bomb' has also had a life as 'a large stash of drugs' but this meaning hasn't penetrated enough into the general populace to be the cause of any confusion. Generally the intent in the use of the phrase should be clear."
"How the Hell am I supposed to know what they mean?" said Homeland Security New York Bureau Chief Chester Bilby. "We got what seemed like reliable intel and we went with it. They all sound alike to me anyway."
Civil Rights Leader Al Shapton was quick to express concern on a larger scale. "I want to know how many young brothers are sitting in Guantanamo Bay right now for having once casually said that they thought George W. Bush was 'da' bomb!'"
The Department of Homeland Security was quick to reassure reporters that in eight years of intelligence gathering they had never uncovered any young African American males referring to the President in that way.
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