“I was prancing around like a cheesy weirdo,” Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, told history lecturer David Eisenbach’s class Thursday afternoon. “It was fun.”
Entering Altschul Auditorium to a rousing round of applause and the sounds of their own video, Ettinger and her two colleagues of the humor Web site Barely Political sat down to discuss their success and its implications in front of Eisenbach’s popular class, “The American Presidency Since 1898."
“The most fascinating thing for me was that you know the Obama team had to come together and have this little conference and be like, ‘What the hell do we do about Obama Girl?’” said Barely Political founder Ben Relles, who masterminded the video that began as “I Got a Crush on Jack Bauer,” later evolving into “I Got a Crush...On Obama.” The video, in which Ettinger is depicted in a number of suggestive poses, features Obama Girl lip-synching a passionate (and fictional) infatuation with the Illinois Senator and Columbia alumnus.
Stressing the importance of a trend that Eisenbach predicts will be studied for decades to come, the panelists touched on the different ways candidates have reacted to videos like the ones created by Barely Political. While Obama’s camp expressed mild disappointment and warned the Web site to carefully consider its actions, John McCain cheerfully endorsed both his unaffiliated videographer supporters and Obama’s.
“Sometimes it makes me a little sad,” Ettinger said of the lack of communication between herself and the Obama team—particularly with the man himself—“but other times I completely understand.”
Eisenbach compared the political impact of online video to the televised debates that changed the course of the 1960 presidential election.
“Those traditional lines between pop culture—very low pop culture in some cases—
and the presidential election have gone out the window,” he said.
The discussion was heavily punctuated by video clips, most of which drew laughter from the students.
“This is Amber teaching Mike Gravel to dance,” Relles said in response to one image that popped up on the screen.
“Can we watch that?” asked Eisenbach, who serves as communications director to the presidential candidate, Alaskan Senator, and GS ’56 alumnus. Relles demurred,
saying the footage was not available. Eisenbach sighed.
“I was there,” he explained to the class. “It was pretty entertaining.”
It was in connection with the filming of an upcoming video co-starring Ettinger and Gravel that Eisenbach first met the trio. Pitched by Barely Political, the video will chronicle attempts by Gravel to win Obama Girl’s affections.
Afterward, many students noted the discrepancy between Ettinger’s screen image and actual persona.
“The way she was portrayed [in the video] was different from the way she was in the interview,” Qiuyun Song, CC ’08, said. “She’s a regular person.”
Others’ impressions were more specific.
“She’s a cutie,” Jack Grumbach, CC ’10, said. “She looks better than she does in the videos.” He paused to reconsider. “No, she looks really good in the videos too.”