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No more crush on Obama

Betsi Fores The Daily Caller News Foundation
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Amber Lee Ettinger found fame as the online sensation “Obama Girl,” starring in a music video so popular that even the Hillary Clinton camp tried to horn in on the action and steal her away.

“I’ll always feel a tie, and a special connection [with] him,” Ettinger told The Daily Caller on Wednesday. “He does have a special place in my heart.”

But all is not well in Obama Girl-land. Like many Americans, Ettinger isn’t quite ready to call the Obama presidency a slam-dunk success.

“Well, he had a lot of work to do,” she told TheDC. “He was brought into a situation that was very hard, not a lot of people would be able to deal with that situation. But yeah, he’s got a lot of work to do.”

She also has a soft place in her heart for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who she calls “the nicest guy I have ever met in my entire life.” Ettinger appeared twice on Huckabee’s Fox News Channel show.

Ettinger received a crush of responses to her “Crush on Obama” video in 2007.

“The amount of positive response I received was truly inspiring. I had a lot of people tell me that they went out and voted because of me. It was really cool to see such a great response like that.”

But not everyone was encouraging: “For every positive response there was a negative one, too. I just tell myself that you can’t please everyone, and try to focus on the positive.” (RELATED: YouTube ‘Obama girl’ was almost ‘Hillary girl’)

Ettinger also catches blame from some Americans for giving Obama the broad appeal that made him electable in 2008. But she’s not buying it. “I feel like people are mad at me for that,” she said. “It’s like — don’t hold it against me. I just was in a video.”

Betsi Fores