Mike Gravel Woos Obama Girl

Web offers chance to poke fun, change a few minds

(NEWSER) - Viral election videos offer campy calls for change, seamless special effects, and more than a few celebrity cameos. Laughs aside, “over the past decade they’ve also impacted politics—sometimes changing the course of elections and frequently providing a few laughs in an otherwise wonky world,” Jeffrey Ressner writes in picking Politico's top 10 of '08.

1. Yes We Can: Will.i.am’s minimalist all-star Obama tribute "may be the most creative video of any type to emerge this year.”
2. Dear Mr. Obama: An injured Iraq veteran explains why war is a good thing.

Hazleton, Pa., doesn't share YouTube star's crush

(NEWSER) - Turns out that Obama Girl, aka Amber Lee Ettinger, hails from Hazleton, Pa., which is right in the heart of Clinton country. To get a sense of how her candidate’s message is getting through, McClatchy visited Ettinger’s family and neighbors in this former coal town near Scranton, Hillary’s family home. Turns out the town definitely does not share her crush on Obama. More»

Candidate-themed calypso, reggae tunes hit YouTube

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama is inspiring tropical love songs, the Miami Herald reports, and the tunes—from Trinidad calypso king the Mighty Sparrow’s Barack the Magnificent to Jamaican reggae fixture Cocoa Tea’s Barak Obahama—are firing up YouTube. The songs are also a signal of the Illinois Democrat's popularity outside the US, particularly in Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba. More»

Even Obama-lovers put up firewall of online sarcasm

(NEWSER) - The Internet may love Barack Obama—he leads other presidential hopefuls in online fundraising—but some new Obama sites are a tad sarcastic, the Washington Post reports. Sites like BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com and SenatorObamas.com are poking fun at Obamamania even as they partake in it. “It’s a backlash with a small ‘b,’” liberal analyst Peter Leyden said. “A ‘baracklash.’” More»

Ripping off mask at Hillary Halloween party: 'I have nothing to hide. I enjoy being myself."

(NEWSER) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama turned up the heat on frontrunner Hillary Clinton last night on "Saturday Night Live" when he appeared in the opening sketch—a Halloween party thrown by a faux Bill and Hillary and attended by faux Democratic candidates—as himself. Everyone was in costume, including Barack, who wore an Obama mask, then ripped it off to reveal the real thing. More»