“I’ve Got a Crush on Obama” has effectively replaced Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” from the Sopranos finale as the stupid song I can’t get out of my head. I was wondering if this cute, funny, mildly risque video that was all over cable news this weekend was going to have any real impact on the campaign, and the guys at TechPresident may have hit on it:
Okay, so, the problem is that the video is a distraction. BUT, the reason it’s a distraction is that parts of the traditional news media are treating it as such. Who’s dumbing down the discourse? Not the video producers — they made an excellent piece of parody, with clever lyrics, good shooting and good editing. Who’s jumping through hoops to avoid talking about the substance of political issues? Seems pretty clear from here.
If you’re a news entity – be it cable TV, newspaper, magazine, what have you – and you have a limited amount of space and time to report on Obama, you’re obviously going to feature the curvy model. And all the time that you’re running “I can’t wait until 2008… you’re the best candidate…” is time you’re not showing the actual candidate giving an actual reason to vote for him.
Anything Obama did/said/announced in the past 72 hours he ought to repeat, because any coverage of him since late last week has featured more T&A in the B-roll footage than coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death. “I’m sorry, Senator, were you saying something? We missed it, because there was a woman in a bikini singing next to your photo.”
On the other hand, the video says that Obama is popular, dreamy, and attracts the admiration of curvy models. Hmm. Maybe that IS an effective message for the Obama campaign…