With the right wingers attempting to equate the last name of our presidential nominee with the first name of the leader of al Qaeda, we should be smart about this and not go along with it.
These days it is easy to find instances of people, even smart progressives, calling bin Laden by his first name. That's just silly. We should be making a concious decision to always refer to him as bin Laden. Calling him Osama not only feeds into the right winger attempts repeat the name as much as possible, but also opens one up to the occassional embarassing slip of the tongue which can really derail the point you are trying to make whether to your friends or to a national TV audience.
If this thing continues further, news media figures will start using the name Osama increasingly and the right wing frame will grow its ability to create connections in the minds of voters who are only barely paying attention, hurting Barack's chances in he fall. So call him bin Laden. Newsmakers are usually identified by last name and most style sheets codify that preference. If progressives only use bin Laden, that makes it easier to call out right wingers who go on teevee to try and force the connection in people's minds. You could even interrupt them mid-sentence: "Wait, do you mean bin Laden?" If it causes them to have to stop mid-thought and explain themselves, chewing up their alloted time, they might even stop doing it.
I really think this is an important thing - and something we can each do little by little to guide the language of our discussion in the correct directions. Let me know what you think