Forgive me as I wander off from politics for a moment …

Along the train tracks between New York City and Connecticut are a series of posters intended to remind people about the problem of AIDS. The posters read: We’re Forgetting AIDS, with the “for” in “forgetting” in light gray type and the “getting” in scarlet type. I know that the creators of the poster want us to read “We’re Forgetting AIDS” and “We’re Getting AIDS,” but what it really looks like is “We’re For Getting AIDS”–not the message they meant to send at all. Worse, whe the sun goes down the light grey “for” stands out while the deep scarlet “getting” fades into the black background, producing a poster that reads: “We’re For AIDS.”

Another weird design: I just saw a poster of St. Barack of County Cook in which the semideity Himself is depicted in something like one of those Wall Street Journal woodcuts. The designer clearly meant to depict the Dalai Obama’s face illuminated by the bright shining future he promises us all, but exactly half his face is cast in shadow, with the shadow-line bisecting his face along a vertical line, so the black-and-white image makes it look like his face is half black and half white, suggesting not so much creative graphic design as an obscure reference to the senator’s biracial parentage.

Obama design is pretty weird in general. Consider this gem:

That’s right, an “Obama Large White Ornament.” Not a Christmas-tree ornament, mind you, but a generic ornament to help make festive the generic “holidays.” Tell me the guy doesn’t have a messiah complex!

And, Obama being a Democrat and all, his schwag is conveniently segregated:

And what is that supposed to be, some kind of clumsily stereotypical lotus design around the “Asian Americans Pacific Islanders for Obama”? Isn’t that sort of crass?

McCain’s merch, on the other hand, has a guy chewing a stogie on the cover: