"You're into border security/Let's break the border between you and me"... sings Obama Girl.

Obama Girl is our new glimpse into the way independent YouTube videos are going to transform campaign advertising:



According to Jake Tapper, the video "poke[s] racy fun at the way some voters have responded viscerally to both Obama's charisma and the personal nature of his political appeal." Yes, and the video also stimulates the viewer to feel even more viscerally bonded to Obama. I love the fact that there is nothing the campaigns can do about material like this (although I'm sure there are people who would like to regulate this kind of thing and think it would/should be legal to do so).

Background facts (in case you are foolish enough to assume the singing voice is that of the woman you see in the video):

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.

And they do like Obama and hope to help him -- with material he can never (openly) approve of. Interesting how his inability to control it allows something so unacceptable to have its effect helping him.

But this is America. Meanwhile, in Iran, they're executing porn actors.

UPDATE: Ben Relles grew up in Madison.