CNN Special Alert: Obama rhymes with Osama

CNN annoyed liberal bloggers this week when it aired a story on how Senator Barack Obama's last name sounds suspiciously like al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's first name, and that his middle name is "Hussein."

Then, in a surreal mimicry of the Daily Show, The Situation Room's Jeff Greenfield weighed in on the fashion choices the presidential aspirant made during his recent visit to New Hampshire. Greenfield observed that Obama was "sporting what's getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie." While this made Obama "look comfortable in his skin," the CNN reporter opined, "he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb."

Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable. And maybe that's not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke.

But it wasn't enough to compare a future Presidential candidate to the holocaust-denying leader of an Axis of Evil member state. Greenfield wasn't done:

Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread. Or is that threads? -- Wolf."

Yes, filling 24 hours with serious news without boring viewers to death is difficult—but is this the best CNN has to offer? Greenfield's plea: it was just a joke.