At first glance, it may seem a West Jordan couple have bucked their critics and continued to sell sock monkey dolls modeled after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

However, while David and Elizabeth Lawson have said they're considering moving forward with the Obama doll, it's not clear whether they're behind SockPoliticians.com, which advertises sock monkeys modeled after Obama and Republican candidate John McCain.

The site is similar to the Lawsons' original TheSockObama page, which is no longer active. However, the new site has twisted the title to TheObamaSock.

An automated response to an e-mail asking about the ownership of the SockPoliticians.com Web site was answered, "SockPoliticians.com is still selling Obama and McCain sock dolls." The e-mail didn't say who owns the site.

The Lawsons, of West Jordan, didn't respond to an interview request on Wednesday.

The Lawsons told the Deseret News earlier this week, "We're currently exploring our options," after manufacturer Binkley Toys Inc. pulled the plug on the dolls.

The Obama sock monkeys had come under fire by critics who called them racist. The racial undertones of depicting black Americans as monkeys dates back to Jim Crow, when such comparisons were used to frame blacks as a lesser race.

The Lawsons have continued to defend their product against charges of racism. However, David Lawson, speaking on KSL radio's Doug Wright show Wednesday, said while they were looking at moving forward with the dolls, there were no concrete plans in place.

In the meantime, Lawson told Wright that his company, TheSockObama, had always planned on a sock monkey McCain doll, along with a whole cast of monkeys. That's a departure from a statement last week in which the Lawsons said the plans for a McCain doll had been a potato, not a monkey.

That statement said: "If we choose to move forward with a Republican candidate, we'll begin with an elongated and slightly lumpy, fuzzy Idaho potato."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com