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This week brought an Obama campaign television ad featuring Lena Dunham, creator, writer and star of the popular HBO series, “Girls”, wherein Ms. Dunham cleverly compares first time voting to first time sex.
Here’s a video of the ad:
As you may have heard, a number of voices from the conservative Greek choir went wild with Redstate.com Editor-In-Chief, Eric Erikson, leading the way .Here’s what Erik had to say—
“If you need any further proof we live in a fallen world destined for hell fire, consider the number of people who have no problem with the President of the United States, via a campaign ad, ridiculing virgins and comparing sex to voting.”
While I can’t quite get my arms around Erikson’s notion that this ad “ridicules virgins”, his concern that the advertisement is the ultimate proof that we live in a fallen world sent me off on a search to discover whether our current state of moral decay is a condition that has recently arrived or if there is past evidence of political humor signifying our descent into darkness.
It turns out that if joking about first time sex being similar to first time voting is the final Horseman of the Apocalypse, we’ve been doomed for quite some time now. The most recent example is a cover story published by Reason Magazine, the voice of the Libertarian movement, where we find the following:
“Voting for president is a lot like sex—and not just because it takes place every four years in the solitude of a semi-private booth. Both are intensely personal activities that nonetheless can have profound public consequences. We might add that both often involve drug-and-alcohol-fueled delusions and morning-after feelings of guilt, shame, and recrimination.”
Wow…the Libertarians even brought drugs and alcohol into their own revelation of our societal depravity. Naughty!
While this effort by Libertarians would, at the least, give credence to the point of view that it is not only Democrats and progressives who are responsible for our fallen status, there is additional evidence that our nation’s tumble into the fires of Hell is a bi-partisan kind of a deal.
Eric Kleefield over at Talking Points Memo reminds us of the following gem uttered from the lips of none other than Saint Ronald of the Right who gave us the following joke when addressing a group in a New Jersey, working class bar during the final days of the 1980 campaign—
“I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”
Now how is that not just a bit bluer than Ms. Dunham’s spoof?
So, come on Erik…if you can’t have a sense of humor, at least you can muster the necessary historic perspective to give credit where credit is due—when it comes to putting a few off-color yuks into the electoral process, Lena Dunham doesn’t hold a candle to the blue comedy stylings of the great Ronald Wilson Reagan.
contact Rick at thepolicypage@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @rickungar
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