This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Posted: 11:55 AM- Here is the update released by Elizabeth Lawson:

We Don't Want to Say Goodbye -- An Update from TheSockObama Co.

We at TheSockObama Co. have some questions to pose. What's really going on in America? In the good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism ; free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America.

Double standards appear to be a common thread here. It's okay for there to be hundreds of thousands of Google sites containing references to our current president's resemblance to a chimpanzee. However, it's not okay to make that same association regarding our possible next president. Isn't this the very definition of hypocrisy? We find this to be both obvious and curious in the same breath.

After seven days as an e-commerce merchant, we had to close our doors today at http://www.thesockobama.com" Target="_BLANK">http://www.thesockobama.com. Sadly, we are currently issuing refunds to all of our wonderful new Customers around the globe. TheSockObama is no longer scheduled to go into mass production. Nor will his cast of politically plush friends be produced, including JohnnieMcSock, his fierce political competitor that we had planned to introduce next week. We are compelled to take this action, as a result of our designer/supplier conceding, seemingly due to the enormous pressure from opposers. Have the bullies won here? Our first and last foray into the blogging world began and ended on Tuesday June 10th. In an amateurish, clumsy attempt at marketing a time-sensitive, politically plush toy online; we came upon some sort of an election-themed website that looked promising; and we blogged our new business with a sassy lure of plush prose. We didn't know there were rules to blogging. We know now.

There, the blogging dens of resistance quickly began their fury of emails. An electronic battery of fiery darts flowed swiftly but silently through the veins of technology. Feverish fingers frantically clicking coast to coast, crashing and burning our tragically naive - yet sparkling website. A steady stream of repetitive verbal eloquence graced our Customer service inbox with tasty tidbits like, eff-ewe and every other colorul expletive you could possibly imagine. We thought we had heard it all. Hey thanks. This is America, right?

Having led a moderately quiet lifestyle until now; our social calendar suddenly filled up with vivid and creative death threats. And last we heard, a posse of bloggers from back east are on their way over to conduct - how did they phrase it, a good ol' fashioned KKK house burning party at David & Elizabeth's. Kinda exciting stuff, but this in America?

On Friday the Media swooped in. Love notes with call me from newspaper publications and television personalities were left at our door. We agreed to permit two local stations to share a bit of our initial reaction on the madness of it all. We were the top news story on both networks at 9:00pm and 10:00pm.. By the way, TheSockObama story preceded the shocking and untimely death of our well loved Tim Russert of NBC. What the heck does this say about the spiritual barometer of a proclaimed to be united people? Unfortunately, this is America.

The questions we still find perplexing are; is America really ready for change? With the number of Customers we've had to disappoint in our first week of business; are we saying it's okay to take something out of the marketplace that other people want to buy? Are we now censoring one another's liberty as Americans to freely purchase goods and services on our own terms? Is this the kind of America we want?

Before we close, please note that the creators of TheSockObama are not of the Mormon faith. Kindly refrain from unkind remarks about our neighbors and friends of the Mormon faith whom we love and hold dear.

We wish to thank all of our TheSockObama Co. Customers and supporters in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. We hope to meet again soon in a new venue.

Sincerely yours,

TheSockObama Co.