President Obama’s re-election campaign released an ad over the weekend that featured Republican rival Mitt Romney singing “America the Beautiful” and a series of headlines that say Romney as governor of Massachusetts outsourced jobs and that he offshores his millions in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. In retaliation, and to steer attention from calls for Romney to disclose multiple tax returns and more details about his tenure at Bain Capital, his campaign on Monday released an online video with President Obama crooning the opening lyrics of the Al Green classic “Let’s Stay Together” and headlines that accuse the president of political cronyism.
By Monday afternoon, BMG Rights Management, which owns the rights to the Al Green song said, “Let’s not stay together” and claiming copyright infringement, forced the campaign to remove the video (“America the Beautiful” is in the public domain).
When will Team Romney learn?
The Republican, who was still in the midst of his primary battle, broke into song at a campaign event after Obama pretty much wowed the world with his singing ability during a January fundraiser at the Apollo Theater. It was like Romney’s competitive nature got the best of him and the result was not pretty. Instead of coming off as cheeky and charming like Obama, his performance was kind of embarrassing to watch. Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul accused the president of mocking “America the Beautiful,” which this politi-chick finds laughably tone deaf.
At any rate, the Romney team has denied copyright infringement and has vowed to get its video back up.
“Our use was 100 percent proper, under fair use, and we plan to defend ourselves,” a campaign official said.
But they’ve got bigger fish to fry. People on both sides of the ideological aisle are still clamoring to know what’s in those tax returns and the exact nature of Romney’s role at Bain during his “retroactive retirement.”