Cashing In On Obama's Turban Image

If you think the recent photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban is a cheap shot, well you ain't seen nothin' yet. Consider: The popular CafePress.com site features more than 900 anti-Obama designs for sale on some 33,000 T-shirts and other stuff like cups and bibs.

Ranging from silly to the downright offensive, the designs are created and uploaded by millions of would-be entrepreneurs, who then pick which products to emblazon them on and even set the price. "We have a review process that keeps out too much love or too much hate," CafePress CEO Fred Durham says of the more than 250,000 designs displayed on the website at any given time.

He tells our Alex Markels that the sales trends can offer clues to where the election is headed. For example, sales of Obama paraphernalia have surged ever since his first "Yes We Can" speech, and "almost all of it is positive," Durham says of the results of the CafePress meter, which shows Obama outselling his rivals on both sides of the political aisle by about 4 to 1. And while sales of Mitt Romney goods have long since dropped to zero, "McCain isn't really rising," Durham says of the Arizona senator's meager 2.93 percent share of overall election sales, "which could be a good indicator of how the general election is going to go."

By Paul Bedard