Left-leaning America snickered a little bit at the straight-forward subject line on the latest email from the Obama campaign: "Hey." If you're up on your Internet memes, the obvious allusion here, some people pointed out, is to Ryan Gosling's now famous quote, "Hey girl." (It's famous on Tumblr, at least.) The email, like many of those from presidential hopefuls these days, is a request for money. For some reason, there's a deadline for $10 donations to the president's re-election campaign at midnight on New Year's Eve, including a helpful clarification that "Contributions or gifts to Obama for America are not tax deductible." 

Other than taking a Gosling-like approach to greetings, the Obama campaign keeping busy in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses. National Journal's Beth Reinhard tells us that the president's men and women on the ground in Iowa are making phone calls to would-be voters, because, in Reinhard's words, "even though Obama is an incumbent running unopposed, Democrats are using Tuesday's caucus as a test run to prepare for the 2012 general election." They're also, apparently, using email as a test for Barack Obama's ability to keep in touch with Internet culture. So far, it looks like they're doing a good job tapping into the zeitgeist.

Note: We totally Photoshopped Barack Obama into the photo above. And Ryan Gosling think this "Hey girl" meme is totally hilarious.

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Adam Clark Estes