bizarre..

I found this on www.instapundit.com:

OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS TAKEN AN AMERICAN ICON HOSTAGE, notes Fredrik Norman, and so far no one seems to notice. Look at the poster in this photo

http://www.tctubantia.nl/CDA/regioportal/1,2078,1654__772741_,00.html


and look behind Osama's left ear. Is someone having fun with Photoshop? Maybe -- but look at this photo
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20011005/wl/imdf05102001094431a.html and this one
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20011009/wl/imdf09102001085522a.html

and you can see the same thing. Maybe it's a mole with the Taliban? This is just too weird.

I knew PBS got its power from the dark side of the force.

Seriously though are Burt and Sesame Street licensed in the mid-east and are they used to propagandize children there as well? A comment on american culture, sexual mores, or did Laden make an appearance on the Arab Sesame Street? wierd doesn't even touch this... just thinkin over the keyboard... g

This is going around the net faster than an Outlook virus. The generally-accepted theory is that someone Photoshopped Bert with bin Laden and posted it somewhere on the net. In order to make the bin Laden poster, someone just retrieved a bunch of images from the net. One of those images was the Bert image.

we should be able to find the original images then... plus he's drinking some jack daniels off to the side there?

no kidding about this spreading like wildfire... but it IS bizarre, and somehow appropriate to boot...

I think the culture reference you're looking for is this:

http://www.fractalcow.com/bert/bert.htm

Check out the "photo evidence".

This little prank is the latest bit of an internet in-joke that goes back years. Whether the posters were doctored, or the photos, is another matter ...

The original image (bin Bert and bin Laden) is shown on <A HREF=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,36218,00.html>this link</A>.

if you check the first link again, you'll notice bert is NO LONGER THERE! Maybe they were getting tired of all the hits on their machine and finally figured out why.

The consesus is that the poster-maker grabbed a bunch of images from the web to make the poster-- if you do a google image search for "osama bin laden," on the first page is the osama and bert picture from the bertisevil site.

Look at this link for more detailed info.

Some of the photos at news sites have indeed been edited to remove bert.