"Barack the Red" campaign is a go

Mar 11, 2010 — Washington Post

Dan Steinberg

Ian Oland is a fan of just about every sports team in the D.C./Baltimore area, and he has nothing against Georgetown. Seriously, he wishes the Hoyas nothing but the best. And even though Barack Obama was supporting a Duke grad during his trip to see the Hoyas, something about that whole deal just rubbed Oland the wrong way.

Because remember, Obama has said he's looking forward to catching a hockey game. He's been given a public and open invitation from Ted Leonsis. He's promised Leonsis to get back to him on that invitation. He's praised Alex Ovechkin during a speech in Russia, and he's told Chuck Todd that he loves hockey.

And yet, the president has now seen three D.C. sporting events without checking in on the city's most successful team. Enough was enough.

"He's kind of treated hockey like the girl you don't want to go to the prom with; you're trying to still be nice while avoiding her," Oland explained. "This is the most exciting hockey team I've ever seen in my life. It just seems like this should happen. It just seems natural. Obama loves sports, he loves being on ESPN, he makes his bracket picks, he throws a football around in the White House. He seems to love every sport except hockey. That just isn't cool."

And so Oland -- a graphic designer who, in his spare time, created the much-loved Matt Wieters Facts, and the increasingly awesome Russian Machine Never Breaks -- figured he needed to launch Barack the Red. He figured he needed to start a Facebook group, aiming for 18,000 members. He figured he needed to solicit Obama-themed hockey artwork. He figured he needed to spend untold hours plotting the above video, and to draft an open letter to the president, like so:

Right around the time President Clinton attended a Caps game, he had eliminated the budget deficit and projected a surplus for the first time in decades. Seeing a game at the phone booth would be a masterstroke of diplomacy as well. Next time you are meeting with Vladmir Putin and there's an awkward silence, you can mention the time you saw Semyon Varlamov stop a puck while performing a triple Salchow. And watching the officials loosely interpret the NHL rulebook might be a great chance to refresh your Constitutional law background.

And along the way, Oland and friends Tim Montenyohl (the video editor) and Peter Hassett (the writer) wound up sinking about 150 hours into the site over the past couple of weeks. Yes, that's more time than you spent on your real job.

So why do it? They wanted to entertain fans, show off some unharnessed creative powers, maybe cause a slight ripple in the fan base, but mostly, they're hoping to catch the attention of someone important who knows someone, who might know someone else, who could tell the president that it's really time. (David Gregory? You listening?) And they want this, because they know it would make Leonsis happy.

"I know how much he wants Obama at a game, and if this can get enough traction to help make it happen, that's like my gift to him," Oland said. "All of us are indebted to him. I haven't seen my girlfriend, I haven't been sleeping, my friends think I'm dead. But if this happens and Ted is happy, that would just tickle me to death."

So go to the site. Join the Facebook group. Sign the petition. It's not about partisan politics. It's about...well, I'm not sure what it's about. Awesome Web sites, anyhow.