A FORMERLY unknown model named Amber Lee Ettinger could hardly be more famous now - thanks to her alias as 'Obama Girl', the most popular online fan of United States senator and American presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The curvaceous, 25-year-old brunette appears - in various stages of undress - in an amusing, risque music video on video-sharing website YouTube, breathlessly singing her love and staunch support for the lanky senator from Illinois.

It spoofs several references from popular music and culture, including the song You Don't Know My Name by Alicia Keys and TV series Baywatch.

The video, titled I Got A Crush On Obama, is so popular that it has been viewed 2.2 million times since it was posted on June 13.

The R&B ditty is also available on Apple's online music store iTunes for US$0.99 (S$1.50) and a second video, titled Obama Girl Vs Giuliani Girl, will be released on YouTube tomorrow.

Ms Ettinger and the video's creators - Ms Leah Kauffman, 21, an undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia; advertising executive Ben Relles, 32; and music producer Rick Friedrich - are the latest contributors to the changing political landscape of the American presidential election of 2008, where candidates and their voters alike have been posting videos on YouTube to garner support and discredit their opponents.

Mr Philip de Vellis, 33, a former strategist with Blue State Digital, made a video that has garnered 3.5 million views since it was first posted in March.

It portrays US senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as 'Big Brother' in a spoof of a TV commercial, titled 1984, that launched the Apple Macintosh personal computer in the US in January that year. The original spot featured IBM as the Big Brother in its Orwellian world.

Mr de Vellis' ad, titled Vote Different, seeks to show how little like an actual conversation Mrs Clinton's one-way mode of address is.

Mrs Clinton has posted various videos on her website, www.hillaryclinton.com, detailing the issues that may form her election platform. In one, she ironically declares: 'This is the first of many talks I hope to be having with you just about every week. If we're going to keep the conversation going, you need to know what I'm thinking.'

In effect, Vote Different is a 'negative advertisement' endorsing Mr Obama, arguably one of Mrs Clinton's strongest rivals in the Democratic race for presidency.

Speaking about the candidates' and voters' use of technology in the coming elections, Mr Mike Gehrke, director of research for the Democratic National Committee, told The New York Times last month: 'It's one of the biggest innovations we've seen in politics.

'(Before,) it would cost a lot of money for a campaign to put together a good TV ad, then you had to buy time, put it on the air and later on websites. Now it goes the other way too, and you have people talking to each other and to the campaigns.'

London's The Observer suggested that YouTube has become the 'ultimate form of democracy' where, in a subversive move, voters have their say and politicians listen.

On July 23, Google-owned YouTube is set to seal its position as the hot new political advertising medium as it co-sponsors with CNN a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates in Charleston, South Carolina.

All the candidates will make a 30-second video that will play at some time during the debate.

Questions from the public will also be recorded and submitted via videos submitted by ordinary people through YouTube.

Mr Chuck DeFeo, who ran the Bush-Cheney online campaign in 2004 and has been involved in online politics for the past 12 years, says: 'Now with the rise of the Internet there is the ability to have a true dialogue with the voter.'

michtay@sph.com.sg

See also: A guide to the Best and the Worst US political campaign videos on YouTube