Childish snub, actually.
Alabama University was known to its fans as "Bama" (particularly those like me, who thought college football here was not worth watching after Paul "Bear" Bryant retired from Alabama). I'm reasonably certain that if, instead of pronouncing his last name Oh-bah-ma, it was pronounced Oh-bam-a ("bam" as in "Alabama") he would take offense. The apostrophe was my way of indicating how "bama" should be pronounced. I'll grant that even now as I explain it, there was very little in the way of humor about it.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell