"I Got a Crush on Obama"

An amusing, risqué music video, featuring a nubile young woman breathlessly singing her love for presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., appeared on the Web this week. Titled "I Got a Crush on Obama," the song and video took the Obama campaign by surprise and further demonstrated how the democratic nature of the Internet — specifically Internet video on sites such as YouTube — is affecting politics in unpredictable ways.

"Hey, 'B,' it's me," a woman who calls herself "Obamagirl" murmurs amorously into a phone at the beginning of the slow jam. "If you're there, pick up. I was just watching you on C-SPAN."

The song and video goes on to poke racy fun at the way some voters have responded viscerally to both Obama's charisma and the personal nature of his political appeal.

"You seemed to float onto the floor/Democratic convention 2000 and 4/I never wanted anybody more/than I want you," Obamagirl coos.

"Baby, I cannot wait/til 2008/Baby, you're the best candidate," she continues as she walks around New York City in various stages of undress, occasionally posing near life-size pictures of the lanky senator from Illinois.

An Obama campaign official said its team had nothing to do with the video, but otherwise declined to comment.

Regardless of whether your candidate is on the giving or receiving end of the viral videos shaping candidates' images these days, YouTube and similar video-sharing Web sites have emerged, making campaigns even less in control of their message than ever before.

Earlier this campaign season, a pro-Obama advertisement assailing Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., based on Apple's "1984" TV commercial, caused a stir when it came out that the creator of the video worked for the company that runs Obama's campaign Web site, despite Obama's claim that he had no ties to the ad. As of Wednesday afternoon, that video had received 3,393,766 hits on YouTube.

As much as the news may break the hearts of thousands of Democratic men, Obamagirl, in reality, is not the pulchritudinous callipygian who riffs on policy with Akon-esque beats, singing "you're into border security/let's break this border between you and me/universal health care reform/it makes me warm."