viz.

I found this fascinating, but wasn't sure what I thought about it. So, I got online (of course!) and found even more posts and articles about it. This post from quotes an A&F spokesman as denying any kind of involvement, and this article calls Obama the "product placement candidate."

Something I noticed in the three short posts, however, stood out to me. Working from their own assumptions about the A&F brand, they offer their own versions of who these guys are. The Huffington Post description seems to imply that they are out of place:

Three guys standing two rows behind the candidate in what is usually a carefully-selected backdrop of loyal sign-waving supporters, each sporting t-shirts clearly bearing the logos of Abercrombie & Fitch. During Obama's speech, they waved their signs dutifully but also clearly communicated with each other; at one point, one of them blackberried. Obama's speech was great as usual (and nice line to slip in there about 4-or-8 years!) but it was distracting to see that huge "FITCH" in the background and see the trio of average-looking dudes bobbing behind his head. Who were they and what were they doing there?

The aforementioned post on Townhall writes,

They're young, white males. Is that the sell? They're also college-aged frat boys with sunburns left over from a Redneck Riviera spring break. Does Obama really need to convince us he can succeed with the kind of voters who drop by the polling place right after a couple keg stands? I was pretty convinced he had that demographic nailed down.

A post on Gawker explains,

Maybe it's a plot by the Obama campaign to win back the gay community, which has something of a taste for the youth clothing retailer and, especially, its catalogs, but whose vote is basically owned by Hillary Clinton. But gays aren't really a swing vote in the upcoming Indiana or North Carolina primaries, nor in the Democratic party's upcoming battle against Republican nominee John McCain.

I still have no idea what those guys were doing there, but I find the ways in which these media sources interpret them to speak more about the interpreters than their subjects, as well as what the authors of these posts and articles project onto the Obama campaign.