The Obama Code Names Explained
by
Hamish Robertson
November 13, 2008 4:39 pm
Unless you're some kind of small-town racist, it's hard to really think of Barack Obama as a renegade. He's just so … Harvard Law. But that's what the Secret Service will be calling him for at least the next four years. (See the BBC's "Secret' Obama code name revealed.") To find out how he and his family got their cool-sounding code names, VF Daily launched an intensive investigation. [No we didn't. —Ed.] Here's what we turned up.
Barack Obama, a.k.a. “Renegade”
While much has been said of the friends our president-elect keeps, there has been little discussion as to what movies he likes to watch. Since witnessing Dennis Haysbert as the first African-American president, on Fox’s 24, Barack became a huge Keifer Sutherland fan. Over the two years campaigning, he painstakingly rented every single movie Sutherland made, from 1983’s Max Dugan Returns to 2008’s Mirrors. Throughout those excited, sleepless nights on board the Obama ’08 bus, no movie left its mark quite like 1989’s Renegades, in which Sutherland reaches new dramatic heights as undercover agent Buster McHenry. And so, upon his election as our nation’s 44th president, he personally asked the Secret Service to refer to him only as “Renegade.” Perhaps the puppy will be called Buster.
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