The Mighty O

By Matt Wood in Miscellaneous on Feb 15, 2007 8:29PM

While some people are busy wondering if Barack Obama is in fact the Messiah, two of the Chicago Tribune's columnists/bloggers have been attending to some of the would-be next President's more immediate concerns. Eric Zorn has been polling readers all week as to what Obama's campaign theme song should be after mixed reviews of the music selection from his early campaign rallies. His choices so far have been a mix of classic but overplayed R&B from Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, and Tina Turner, along with U2's "City of Blinding Lights" and Van Halen's "Right Now." That Van Halen ditty used to be the theme song for Chicagoist's high school football team, but we also got our asses handed to us that year by the eventual conference champions, so we vote nay by association on that one. Personally, we recommend something more topical, like James Brown's "Funky President." Head over to Zorn's website to chip in your ideas.

Meanwhile, Steve Johnson, the Trib's internet critic, puts Obama's new website through its paces, and gives it much-improved marks over his previous placeholder site. BarackObama.com is all Web 2.0-ed up, with Flickr integration, YouTube videos, and social networking features that let anyone create their own profiles and blogs on the site. Judging by the behavior of some of our commenters (**glares at nmpkm**), we're not sure that's going to go well once the campaign mud starts flying, but props to Obama for having the guts to try it out.