Glitch Knocks Obama's Ads Off Air for Thirty Seconds

Obama campaign officials today were trying to get to the bottom of a technical glitch that knocked the Democratic presidential nominee's television ads off the air for thirty seconds yesterday.

Mr. Obama's ads, which have been playing on a continuous loop for the past seven weeks, were scheduled to be broadcast without interruption until Election Day - and so the half-minute hiatus on Saturday set off alarm bells within the Illinois senator's campaign.

"I was watching a football game and they went to commercial," said Obama campaign manager David Axelrod. "And I was expecting to see one of Barack's ads, but instead it was a car commercial. I totally freaked."

Mr. Axelrod said that he and top campaign aides have spent the better part of the day trying to figure out what went wrong "and to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Our strategy of airing Obama ads nonstop around the clock has really started to pay off," he said. "Our polling shows that people are starting to see these ads in their sleep."

Despite national polls showing Mr. Obama in the lead, Mr. Axelrod warned against overconfidence: "There's always a chance of an 'October Surprise' - some kind of unexpected external crisis created by Joe Biden."

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.

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