Friday, November 7, 2008 4:52 PM

But It Did Get Our Attention

By DAVID HERBERT

Change Is Comin, an informal group of D.C. progressives, has already thrown its hat in the ring for the "Most Unfortunately Named Inaugural Ball" award. The group, which held fundraisers for Barack Obama throughout the fall, is calling its Jan. 20 bash "Blue Ball."

Brian Komar, the group's lead organizer and an activist at the Center for American Progress, explained in an e-mail that this will be the second "Blue Ball." In 2004, some of the same people went with the name "cuz we were feelin blue and cuz its a fun name. That is the working title for this party cuz this time blue states delivered and cuz its a fun name."

Not everyone is sold. Jennie Kim, a foreign affairs officer at the State Department, is not a member of Change Is Comin, but was invited to the party.

"Just the one ball," she wrote in an e-mail to the group. "That can't be pleasant. The Dems really need to get better at naming things."

The soiree is the latest example of eyebrow-raising wordsmithing from Democrats this election season. Obama's online social networking site was called "myBO" -- short for myBarackObama.com.

Republicans have had their moments, too. During the GOP's national convention, as Hurricane Gustav ripped through the Gulf Coast, lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and the American Trucking Association were at a party featuring a band called "Hookers and Blow."