I wasn’t sure I heard him right at first.

Jim de Boom, who writes a weekly column on our service clubs, called with one of his tips — they usually pan out to be good news stories so I definitely pay attention when he calls. He was on the road, southbound on the 55. Moments ago, he said, he saw a life-size poster of JFK on a 55 pillar near the 73 flyover with what appeared to be bullet holes in it and maybe some sort of reference to President-elect Barack Obama.

Oh man, I thought. Great news story, but how nasty. Do we have one of those crazy nuts in our backyard? Recently I saw news reports that threats against the president jumped higher than usual after the election. It shouldn’t have to be said that despite your politics it’s wholly inappropriate to even joke about stuff like this. Jim, like most people in his generation, can you tell you specifically where they were when the president was killed. The anniversary of JFK’s death is Saturday, by the way.

Anyway, I told our cops reporter, Joe Serna, and he went by the poster on his way to investigating that case of the statue stolen from Our Lady Queen of Angels (another sad story, but at least this one had a happy ending). He called me to say he saw the poster, too, but that there were X’s where his eyes should be. He couldn’t see any reference to Obama, but he was going too fast to be sure. Not too long after that our photo chief Mark Dustin cruised by and told me there was no reference to Obama, but “Leba, leba, leba” was written on the figure.

Is this some stupid viral marketing strategy, we wondered?

At this point, I have no idea. Google offered no clues. You got any ideas or thoughts?

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