T. Nikki Cesare

Barack Me Tonight: Re-Sounding Politics via the Interweb

Howard Dean’s barbaric yawp during the 2004 Democratic primaries made unquestionable the significance of the Internet to contemporary US politics. The first candidate to utilize fully the web for its support-raising capacity, Dean also recognized the Internet as a community that could shape public opinion. Yet the same apparatus that made him a viable candidate was at least partially responsible in derailing his campaign after his infamous Dean Scream reverberated from the Iowa caucuses to radio, television, and Internet sites across the country.

In the next US presidential election, the Internet became an indispensible resource, particularly via YouTube, which, after only coming into existence in 2005, co-sponsored Republican and Democratic debates. In addition to candidate-monitored sites and blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter updates, and Mike Gravel’s bizarre campaign videos, there simultaneously emerged, from the depths of Dean’s yell, musical responses to the candidates. This paper focuses on two of these responses: Will.I.Am’s collaged video of Obama’s Yes We Can speech and BarelyPolitical.com’s satirical commentary on the country’s infatuation-I Got a Crush on Obama performed by Obama Girl.

Remarkable about both videos is that they each emerged from the private sector but became ubiquitous, public components of the Obama campaign. Reading these videos against each other and through Jacques Attali, Theodor Adorno, and Susan McClary, and considering their relation to political outreach projects like Rock the Vote-as well as to surges of political potential in recent theatre, such as David Mamet’s Race and, somewhat less expectedly, Hollywood blockbusters, such as Avatar and District 9-I argue that these works represent a broader spectrum of community-raising and offer a specifically twenty-first-century genre of political activism in the virtual sphere.