The Obama campaign recently released a controversial “first time” ad starring Lena Dunham, the force behind HBO’s casual-sex crazed comedy, Girls. Flippantly, Dunham equates losing virginity with voting, which is indecent.
Not only is the commercial widely perceived as degrading, its broader message is downright offensive.
The ad makes a joke out of a serious matter – participating in our democracy – and mocks virginity along the way.
I’m no prude, but when the leader of the free world circulates an ad that reasonable people would feel uncomfortable watching with their parents, something has gone awry.
To put things in perspective, imagine a job interview: the male applicant tells his prospective employer, who happens to be female, “Hire me! It’s like losing your virginity: you have to pick the right guy.” This would be deemed inappropriate, and rightly so.
Such comments qualify as sexual harassment.
Demeaning, unprofessional remarks are not tolerated in the workplace, and they shouldn’t be celebrated as clever or cute in support of the person holding our highest office in the land. The ad, though, is only a symptom of a deeper problem: the president’s dirty politics.
This is not the first time the Obama team has shown blatant disrespect for women. Several months ago, the president’s official campaign website advised women to “vote like your ladyparts depend on it.” That was soon taken down, but this advertisement has met with similar outrage, yet the Obama team refuses to remove the video from its YouTube channel.
The blogosphere is ablaze with outrage from citizens deeply disgusted by the undignified portrayal, by Obama, of females.
For instance, Emily Esfahani Smith of the Washington Times lamented Dunham’s participation in “The reduction of young women to their reproductive organs.”
Pop culture is notorious for objectifying women, but the Democratic Party reinforces such stereotypes by portraying women as having one thing on their minds in the voting booth, and it’s not the intricacies of foreign policy.
A cornerstone of his administration has been ensuring women have the ability to practice safe sex, which is frankly no politician’s business.
The president should be focused on representing us well overseas, protecting religious freedom and creating an environment for the economy to thrive, so that women can provide for themselves and manage their own healthcare.
He shouldn’t be wasting our time and his resources to send a degrading impression of women to the public.
This last-ditch effort to woo the female voting bloc with a sexual innuendo just might backfire, however.
The Obama campaign is using women to get four more years in power, and we either wake up now or fall prey to the rank seduction.
