Selling ObamaLove

Does the public find Spokesmodel-in-Chief, Black Obama, sexy?  If you judge by the number of opinion pieces detailing soft-core porn, semi-erotic, reader submitted “dreams” about him, or music videos proclaiming “crushes” on him, you’d probably say “yes.”  However, if you Google, “Barack Obama sexy” and carefully read the predictably high number of hits, only to discover that most of them are responses and commentary on the two examples given, you’d have to determine the answer is, “not so much.”

Now, anyone who has spent any amount of time researching the Nations’ Neophyte President knows that for some reason, Google searches always return an incredibly high number of responses favorable to him.  Go figure.  But, as is often the case, these results can be misleading.  If one examines those results carefully, it is possible to find some rather interesting information.

The question of Oboyhe’scute’s “sex appeal” arose aroused came up today from a reader comment on my last post from “Laree” who claimed she didn’t get the attraction after reading Michelle Malkin’s quote from a love-struck Obamite buried in a Peoria Star Journal article about the President’s visit to a Catepillar-sponsored event last Thursday:

“I see him like he’s my own son, and not in a funny way, either,” Dorothy Tisdale, a 73-year-old Peorian, said in reference to President Obama. She was the same woman who, after Obama’s motorcade passed her, said the experience was “better than having sex.”

Though older women, like Golden Girls’ Betty White, and the aging schoolgirls on The View seem to agree that Obutno is sexy, and Arianna Huffington is determined to publish any and every little thing that hints of Obama studliness, the recurring theme of his dubious “sexiness” bears investigation.  The earliest example that comes to mind is the “I Got A Crush On Obama” You Tube (Google owned) video.  Bear in mind that Google, one of Obama’s largest donors, whose CEO is an Obama advisor, announced its You Tube acquisition October 9, 2006.  The Washington Post reported Obama announced his formation of a “presidential exploratory committee” January 17, 2007, with intentions to formally announce his candidacy on February 10 of that year.  On May 27, 2007, the Washington Post told us that Howard Dean’s former “all around web guy,” Joe Rospars, ran a staff of 11 out of  Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters.

Joe Rospars today is listed as Program Director and Founding Partner of Blue State Digital, Obama’s online website and development consultants responsible for Obama for America or Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign site now under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee.  Blue State was founded by refugees from Howard Dean’s campaign trained at the knee of Dean’s personal ‘net pioneer, Joe Trippi.

On Blue State Digital’s OFA website however, they claim that Rospars’ 2004 founded company was hired by the Obama campaign in 2006.  But, Business Week says that the company, which has also worked for George Soros, was hired by Team Obama in February of 2007, nine days before Obie launched his campaign.  At any rate, on March 5, 2007, the anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Obama unauthorized, “Hillary 1984” You Tube video mysteriously debuted, accredited only to ParkRidge47, with “I Got A Crush On Obama” following shortly thereafter.

techPresident’s Micah Sifry investigated the mystery of the 1984 You Tube fueled “Barocket” launch, March 19, concluding, along with his blog readers, that the video had to have come from the Obama camp.  Sifry, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, linked above, was ultimately proven correct after the Huffington Post outed ParkRidge47 as Phillip de Vellis, an employee of, you guessed it, Blue State Digital.  de Vellis came clean in a subsequent HuffPo post, claiming that he made the video in his basement and uploaded it to You Tube without BSD’s knowledge or authorization.  Sure.  He was fired, and that, as they say, was that.

Except…

In late September, during the general election, an eerily similar event occurred regarding a Palin-bashing video.   The Jawa Report exposed Winner and Associates’, Ethan Winner, employee and son of the public relations company founder and Axelrod associate, Charles Winner, as the producer of this video, now removed by You Tube, featuring a voice-over artist often employed by David Axelrod.  After the evidence surfaced, Winner, a known Obama supporter, sent an email to the Jawa Report, claiming he made the video on his own, without knowledge or authorization of anybody in his dad’s company, and the distinctive voice-over artist, who had never worked for David Axelrod (how would he know?) was hired by him.  Of course.

So, now we go back to “I Got A Crush On Obama,” the first of a series of videos that launched the ObamaLove campaign.  Supposedly, yet another independent singer/songwriter/producer was so smitten with political lust that she and her partner hired an actress to lipsync her Obama anthem and post it on the internet for free, not long after the freshman Senator tossed his hat in the ring.  Oh.  Yeah.

Though HuffPo reported on outing of the “Crush” video producers, Barely Political, which was later purchased by Fred Seibert’s Next New Networks, it was ABC News they quoted:

The song was performed by Leah Kauffman, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia, who wrote the lyrics with a friend, 32-year-old advertising executive Ben Relles, and the music with her producer, Rick Friedrich.

An actress/model named Amber Lee Ettinger then lip-synched the song for the video, shot by filmmakers found on Craigslist two hours before Relles and Ettinger hit New York City one Friday in May to shoot the video on a DV camera.

“Not including the hours we spent working on it, it probably cost a couple thousand dollars,” said Relles, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, who said he did it for fun, not money, but is also selling “Obamagirl” and “I Got a Crush on Obama” T-shirts.

The “Crush” crew’s Relles asserted that they invested their time and money into the project and posted it on their new You Tube page June 10, 2007, in response to a Hillary Clinton songwriting contest they found on her campaign website.  Huh?  Like me, but long before me, and without my knowledge until I researched this post, Gregory Chang of Stop Obama, came to the same “Crush crew must be Axelrod astroturf” conclusion I did, for pretty much the same reasons, only he got there in April of last year.

Back to Joe Rospars‘, Obama’s embedded Blue State Digital, Joe Trippi trained, web guru.  Rospars’ the guy who commandeered Joe Anthony’s independent MySpace profile.  This January 8, 2009, Boston Globe article gives a bit of insight into the incestuous relationship between Joe Trippi and all his computer-geek spawn, including Boston native Jascha Franklin-Hodge of Blue State, and the impact of the exploitation of their talents and techniques upon the Obama campaign and administration, as well as politics of the fuure in general.

While the Obama Machine has denied involvement with “I Got A Crush On Obama,” there’s no doubt they have exploited the viral video to promote his sex appeal to young, female voters.  Given Joe Rospars’ involvement and tactics, it would be more of a stretch to believe that “Obama Girl” was a completely independent production than to suspect that Camp O had a hand in it somehow.  After all, Blue State Digital says that’s the way you do it:

In many cases, there is an opportunity to use an attention-grabbing tactic (such as an innovative online application or a memorable video) to create an online buzz that has the potential to go viral, bringing people into your organization’s orbit much more quickly and organically than could be achieved via a conventional program.  We’ll help you identify and take advantage of these opportunities, so that you can grow more quickly and put your new constituents to use in pursuit of your organizational goals.

On Blue State Digital created mybarackobama.com, now morphed into Organizing for America, you can find other Obama worshippers convinced that not only is he the hottest thing since fire, that heat can make you sexy too.  Now, do you see where ObamaLove is better than sex nonsense came from?

Yep, the guy who loves him the most.