Obama merchandise spotted in Harvard Square, Cambridge:

Last week I was browsing through Obama gear in Denver, in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention. But in the US the stuff is everywhere. Obamamania has officially jumped the shark from politics to pop culture. Much of it is knowing and ironic, such as this Barack Obama "Action Figure we can believe in":



But some is more earnest. Here is a children's book about Barack Obama:



Sample page:



In Ireland, the nation is swooning over another report about Barack Obama's Irish roots (Dublin now, as well as Offaly).

Streetside vendors across the US also sell many knock-off Obama shirts. The Boston Globe covered Obama-themed merchandise in its Sunday edition:

The Obama cargo cult is vast, stretching from quirky online precincts, where action figures in his senatorial likeness and replicas of his Number 23 high-school basketball jersey are readily available, to the outskirts of high style. Paparazzi last year caught actress Halle Berry in a $46 "Obama for Change" shirt, and these days fashion-forward Tokyo teenagers promenade past an Obama shirt hanging prominently in a shop window in the trendy Harajuku neighborhood.

But nowhere has the presumptive Democratic nominee's unusual persistence in consumer culture been felt as strongly as in the informal urban economy, where his candidacy is delivering an unexpected summertime jolt.

In downtown business districts and uptown commercial corridors, wares with Obama's words and image - and even items with no real connection to his campaign, but bearing his name nonetheless - are taking space on vendors' tables that once were reserved for sports and hip-hop icons.