I knew that there were a lot of unstable folks attracted to the Obmessiah's campaign, but this one is weird no matter how you slice it.

Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.

“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.

With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.

The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.” Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.

I'm sorry, people -- this is cult-like behavior. What next? Tattooing the name across your forehead? You sound like a bunch of followers of the Manson family or some fringe religious group that begs for money on the street corner and survives by dumpster diving.

However, Sweetness and Light reports that this might not be much of a phenomenon at all -- and that based upon a quick search of Google, the buzz is more about the New York Times writing about the phenomenon rather than any grassroots movement to do this.