Does that mean we can't criticize the Obama campaign for that Lena Dunham ad anymore?
Possible arguments:
1. Reagan was talking to guys in a working-class bar, not putting the smutty material in a carefully crafted, glitzy ad aimed at everyone.
2. If Obama got caught on an open mike saying something like "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever; we begin bombing in five minutes," there would be nothing to complain about because Reagan did that.
3. We remember Ronald Reagan. We knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. Lena Dunham, you're no Ronald Reagan.
ADDED:
4. For Ronald Reagan's remark to be taken as sexual, we would need to believe that he wanted us to visualize him on the receiving end of sexual penetration, and he couldn't have meant that.
5. The comparison to Reagan's joke assumes that the criticism of Dunham's ad was based on prissiness about sexuality, but it was really about trivializing the election and treating women as if they vote based on their sexual attraction toward the President.
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Compared to the long list of particulars standing against his name, Obama's deplorable ad is small potatoes indeed.
For failing to even try to send help to our people in Benghazi and leaving them hung out to dry, he is unfit for office.
I'm Clyde S. and I approve this messge.
"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."
-- Don't they say the same thing about exercise or running a marathon? Maybe it speaks to my naive nature, but I wouldn't've thought sex if someone told me that.
That's dirtier? I was expecting something much cruder.
But yes, a joke in a bar is far different than a scriped out commercial. The crudeness of the commericial wasn't the problem - it was the insulting nature of it.
I like the way the linked article says that people are "outraged" over the ad.
I wasn't.
I thought it was kinda silly, and probably pretty inconsequential. I've been listening to liberals prattling on about how they do sex better for 60 years. Pretty foolish stuff.
Just another in the long litany of "Vote for Obama or you hate women" ads. Nothing new.
No matter how much the Lady Parts voters want to deny it, there's a world of difference between an old man making a joke in a bar about losing his and a cute young woman making a webcam video about losing hers.
I'm with Matthew on this one--I, too, did not see anything sexual about Reagan's comment.
I can still remember Reagan making his outlaw Russia joke, which was a patently obvious joke, and the shock! the feigned shock reaction, just as patently obvious from "The Anointed," to steal Thomas Sowell's great phrase for all the holier-than-thous in our permanent never changing establishment.
Since brevity is the soul of wit, it's pretty obvious that Lena is half the person Reagan was.
Also, I don't see the parallel, on further reading. If this was meant to be sex, Reagan is admitting to having slept with Democrats plenty of times before, but that he will now try sleeping with someone different. I don't see how that can be at all like virginity; women don't become virgins again after deciding to stop sleeping with one kind of guy and start again; so it can't hurt in the same way.
Also... Reagan is a man. My understanding is that, uh, sex for the first time isn't the same for them. Because, uh... you know.
Wow. That's it? That's the comparison that's supposed to neutralize our disgust at Lena Dunham? Pretty thin gruel.
And like Matthew Sablan, I'm not even sure my first reaction was to think of it as a sexual innuendo. Certainly not a particularly crude one. I kept reading, waiting for the outrageous part and then I got to the end and realized that was it.
Reagan's barroom joke wasn't about the "first time" he voted, it was about the "first time" he voted Republican.
If it was a sexual metaphor, it was more like gay sex.
Lena Dunham is a hetero-norming bigot.
[From the linked piece:] As the outrage train over Lena Dunham's Obama ad rolls on [...]
Oh, please. Absolutely no one was "outraged." Unless by "outraged" you mean "faintly disgusted by the epic lameness."
But we're talking about Republicans here, who are supposed definitionally to think about sex as little as possible, and fly into rages if anyone alludes to the subject.
Matthew and DavidD, I did see something sexual in Reagan's joke. I think he was playing off "pull the lever." If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
You call that dirty? I thought it was going to be something like Reagan saying pulling the lever for a Democrat is like pulling a tampon out of the corpse of a syphlitic whore......I watched Lena Dunham's show with considerable interest. There was one scene where she and her boyfriend have a fight. The reason? He pissed on her in the shower. Many women would consider being pissed on a deal breaker, but her character and the boyfriend were able to work through this misunderstanding and reconcile. I thought of that scene during her commercial. People who are broad minded and tolerant and don't mind being pissed on should vote for Obama.
If only Benghazi got that kind of scrutiny.
I think part of the sleaze factor of the Dunham ad is that it's aimed directly at college-age girls. (Is it weird that I have trouble thinking of them as women -- or is it just a sign that I'm getting old?)
So, I'd go with the first option.
Also, the extended format -- running on with the "dreamy Obama" gag for several minutes is somehow different than one quick punchline. The humor comes quickly, the "creepy" factor sneaks up on you over a longer period of time.
For every women they are winning over with Sandra Fluke and Lena Dunham they are repelling a few more. I don't mean in a stuffy religious kind of way, I mean in an I almost pissed myself laughing at how pathetic yet comical the Lena Dunham add was. Does Obama really think he needs to sell himself to 18 year old women. If they are homeschooled smart and filled with self respect this won't work on them, if they think Lena Dunham and Sandra Fluke are cool then they were already going to vote for Obama.
Oops. *ad that is
The Dunham ad isn't outrageous at all. It's desperate, as is the campaign promulgating it.
*?
I didn't get the sexual innuendo of Reagan's remark. The "bombing Russia" comment was later shown not to be a slip but a way to shake up the Kremlin. It was played as a joke but there was a strategy about it.
"I did see something sexual in Reagan's joke. I think he was playing off "pull the lever." If you know what I mean, and I think you do. "
I don't and haven't the faintest idea what you are referring to. You need to get out more and get some fresh air.
Lessee now...
Reagan was talking about himself.
After 8 months of War On Women, Barry treats women worse than he says the Romster does.
Do the math.
I can see how someone might see Reagan's remark as a sexual reference but that's not how it sounded to me. Switching from Democratic to Republican sounded more like growing pains.
It's almost like Obama doesn't want the vote of anyone other than 25 and under school girls (well 30 year old school girls in Sandra Fluke's case).
Or Reagan has a sense of humor and he knows you tell a joke fast and get out.
Is the Obama ad supposed to be funny? If it's a joke it fails, because they take the metaphor and run it into the ground.
It's a joke without a set-up, without a pay-off, without any laughs, and it goes on and on and on.
Reagan is (lightly) making fun of the men in the bar. He's calling them pussies if they don't vote Republican. "It hurts for a minute." It doesn't hurt guys! It hurts girls. So he's saying if you're scared to vote Republican, you're acting like a girl.
And all of that could be offensive--jokes can always backfire--except Reagan was a fantastic politicisn.
Obama is a horrible one. That ad is truly awful. It goes on and on and on with the stupid metaphor. No laughs, and the take-away is that Obama is the best man in the universe, vote for him. Ugh.
I see he has been out talking to the MTV crowd too. Desperation.
It means that the Romney campaign is seizing on stupid stuff that's supposed to be a sign of Obama's low character.
A low character that was obvious in 2008.
But they're hoping to reach whoever thinks Obama is a good choice, and those are not smart people. Hipocrisy is the only vice those voters might recognize.
"We knew knew Ronald Reagan."
Sure you did. But did you knew knew John Sununu?
Yet you think he would know they were already in the bag for him. If he was smart, wouldn't he be trying to persuade the more mature undecideds?
The fact that Obama has two young daughters and still approved an ad such as this speaks to how diseased his mind his. Then again, he was damaged goods long ago...
http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/frankmarshall.htm
Count this as another case of the infanticide-supporting sleazy "preezy" continuing HIS war on women.
FLASHBACK: Obama voted against protecting rape victims in 1999
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/25/flashback-obama-broke-with-colleagues-voted-against-protecting-rape-victims-in-99-state-senate-vote/
Obama In 2003: I'm Pro-Choice Including Late Term/Partial Birth Abortions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YEvBTwDqBY
"No matter how much the Lady Parts voters want to deny it, there's a world of difference between an old man making a joke in a bar about losing his and a cute young woman making a webcam video about losing hers."
Cute? God man you need to raise your standards.
As inane as that ad was I thought using a woman who was plain at best just screamed loser.
Now the Putin ad on the other hand...it just goes to show that the Zero team is bush league all around when it comes to emulating their Soviet heroes.
If that is all he said, it would take a woman to hear it as a sexual reference!
...did you knew knew John Sununu?
Yes. Isn't it amazing how Reagan could surround himself with real men? No Valerie Jarrets in his White House.
Yet you think he would know they were already in the bag for him. If he was smart, wouldn't he be trying to persuade the more mature undecideds?
They've been losing the girl vote since debate #1, when Obama wasn't listening and insensitive, and debate #2 and #3, when Obama was mean, rude and interrupting.
Worst boyfriend ever!
And this ad seeks to bring back the girlfriend vote, by having big sister tell the young virgin undecideds that Obama is the best lover ever.
And you thought the "Obama the boyfriend" tag was a joke. Not at Obama HQ! That's what's really appalling, the ineptness of it.
Once I get past the humor of the ad I see this: If you vote for Obama you will get a great night of sexy, maybe even a few months of having a cool boyfriend. You will go to all the cool parties, have the time of your life. It's no biggy he may be having a fling on the side with some hot babe named Russia or some other hot porn star name. He is the coolest and he hearts you.
With Mitt, you might not get a night of sexy and cool parties, (but who's to say, maybe mature is the new hot). This is the kind of guy that you marry and raise a family with, the one who makes hard decisions and takes responsibility and wait for it... knows how to balance a budget. Hot damn.
Also, we knew Ronald Reagan. Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
After Reagan made the "outlaw Russia forever" remark, Bootsy Collins made a good song about it.
5 minutes, as part of the fake group Bonzo Goes to Washington.
I thought the same thing as Paul. At least Putin used a hot babe in his commercial. All Obama got was hum drum little sexually awkward Lena.
Don't know if anyone has seen Steve Crowder's parody of the Lena Dunhams ad. Very funny!
http://chicksontheright.com/categories/weeps-and-glees/item/23285-steven-crowders-answer-to-lena-dunham#pagejump
The sex is all about metaphorical fantasy.
Obama is sending lot of young people home to their parents covered in college debt.
"You‘re a dirty little whore, and I’m gonna send you home to your parents covered in cum!"
Actual video of Lena Dunham's post-Obama-vote afterglow.
"You want a Gatorade?"
Warning: NSFW
What a moronic, annoying, patronizing ad.
They think someone's going to decide to vote for Obama after watching that?
Romney should show it at his rallies.
Don't vote for Obama. He won't respect you in the morning. You think you're making love, but you're just getting fucked.
Weak comparison at best. There is no innuendo about sex and the President. Comparison fail.
For Ronald Reagan's remark to be taken as sexual, we would need to believe that he wanted us to visualize him on the receiving end of sexual penetration, and he couldn't have meant that.
It is a sex joke, at least for the dirty-minded. I'm dirty-minded, I see the sex. But it's a clean joke. That's what a double entendre is, you can take it more than one way.
Get it? More than one way?
Anyway, he's saying I used to be a pussy just like you guys. But then I voted Republican. And it hurt for a minute but then it was fun.
That's what he's saying, without actually calling anybody a pussy.
Reagan's joke is about crude material, but it's a double entendre, so he gets away with it.
I heard the ad but didn't see it. The actress chick is plain?
Well, you know, only the ugly white girls go for black guys.
I hate voting after Vaj Voters.
They leave cervical mucus on the vote button.
Reagan's was funny. It was actually a joke.
Dunham's was pathetic. Her's was a plea, and it imbued the experience of voting with far more emotion than any normal person would expect, or experience.
Shorter Dunham:
"Take your panties off, and put your feet in the air for Obama!"
Shortest Dunham:
"...just relax and enjoy it."
@ Rustling Leaves 10:34
Exactly. Obama is the hook up king in a culture of desperate lost girls who don't value themselves. Throw away your self esteem for a good hook up time. Fun maybe for a while but eventually you end up alone and wondering what happened.
versus.
The Romney. The nerdish guy who actually respects you and doesn't consider a 'hook up' quickie sex act responsible. Wants to marry, create a life together, respects you. You know, those serious, uncool guys that you stepped on so you can be used by the hook up king.
Maybe those girls like the twit in the video want that first scenario for themselves, but God Damn it don't choose it for the rest of us.
kentuckyliz said...
"I heard the ad but didn't see it. The actress chick is plain?"
On a good day, with good lighting, yes, she can be plain.
treating women as if they vote based on their sexual attraction toward the President
It's more on women's ideas of sexual rites of passage, if that can be separated.
I don't know that that's wrong, for a bloc of 40% of women.
The typical women's vice is foolishness.
And Lena signs a $3.5 million book deal.
Cute? God man you need to raise your standards.Point taken. I didn't know Dunham existed before yesterday.
I watched the video once and never really formed an opinion of Dunham visually.
I was referring critically to her hand mannerisms and head positioning as immature - sort of teasing and coquetteish, like a young woman insecure in her sexuality.
Sorry I wasn't more clear.
Was it only me or did anybody else get a racial vive in the ad?
When she says "you want it to be with a guy..." and she pauses and the ad pauses.
Like her presentation was going were the metaphor led but they ultimately didn’t want to go... for obvious reasons.
I know of more than a handful of evangelical Christian Obama supporters, who see him in kind of a messianic light. I would think this kind of ad would be repellent to this demographic.
Maybe it speaks to my naive nature, but I wouldn't've thought sex if someone told me that.
Exactly. Stupid me -- where is the sex here?
That someone would hear a sexual remark there says something more about that person than it does about Reagan. Same thing could be said about the racialists who hear racial comments in everything that other people say.
To me, Reagan's joke seemed much more of a bandage metaphor. Rip it off quick and it hurts a bit but then it's over. Problem solved. Any sexual metahor was incredibly weak and nothing compared to the extended smarminess of the Lena Dunham video.
Thanks for the Lena link, EDH. Never watched her show. She's doing something interesting there, mocking sex, and men, too.
The guy has all these sex fantasies, and she's playing along, but she's having a tough time doing it. And his fantasy is that she's a little girl. So that's not working for her at all. And she doesn't know when the sex fantasy is over.
It's humor from the girl's point of view. The vibe you get from that is that men are weird and women have to try to play along with the fantasy.
Anyway, it's an awkward sex scene. It's ironic, and supposed to be funny, but kinda sad too.
Weird how she seems so much more passionate and engaged about politics.
I remember after years and years of people applying the word "scumbag" to various jerks, the MSM suddenly got all in arms that it was applied to Bill Clinton. It was then that the MSM informed us that "everyone knew" that the word "scumbag" was slang for a used condom. Well, it was news to me, and probably 99 percent of other people who had ever heard or used the word.
Do you really want to pick a guy that asked you to Benghazi and then stood you up?
When I googled "double entendre" I found this, which reminded me of the old Wonder Woman thread.
"Outraged?" No, just embarrassed for her, just like I'm embarrassed for the country every time Joe Biden opens his mouth.
I save my outrage for Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the real unemployment rate and number of people on food stamps, etc. In other words, the ways Obama has fucked the country over, which are as many and varied as the Kama Sutra.
Oh, the tolerance of liberals! In my boots, I quake! Confusing goose pimples for mountains is such obvious ways.
The part that outrages me is it is now legal for Presidents to decide they want to buy votes by making all of us buy insurance policies to cover stuff some special interest group wants.
How many donors do you think Obama bought himself with this mandate on how the rest of us have to spend our money?
Loosen up. Dunham's add is cute -- lightly lampooning the faux solemnity sometimes attached to having sex for the first time.
(No one really thinks that she's taking the position that one's first vote in a national election should be considered any differently than later votes, do they?)
After establishing a presumably disarmingly humorous frame, she addresses what she thinks are real reason for supporting Obama's reelection.
None of this is a big deal.
Loosen up. Dunham's add is cute -- lightly lampooning the faux solemnity sometimes attached to having sex for the first time.
(No one really thinks that she's taking the position that one's first vote in a national election should be considered any differently than later votes, do they?)
After establishing a presumably disarmingly humorous frame, she addresses what she thinks are real reason for supporting Obama's reelection.
None of this is a big deal.
The video isn't particularly crude. But it is stupid.
After establishing a presumably disarmingly humorous frame, she addresses what she thinks are real reason for supporting Obama's reelection.
Like picking a guy that would ask you to Benghazi and then stood you up.
faux solemnity sometimes attached to having sex for the first time.
faux?
Like picking a guy that would ask you to Benghazi and then stood you up.
He's the guy that asks the girl out to a hip bar in a dangerous neighborhood, hears her getting raped in the bathroom, and decides not to intervene so the people in the neighborhood aren't offended.
Oh, please...such a hubbub over bupkus. There are many more serious things about Obama that should inspire outrage.
I suspect there is no real outrage, but that it is all political theater...in other words, fake. It's an attempt to make the dimmest among the public agree that "gosh darn it Mabel, that Obama there is just one unsavory, sinful sumbitch!"
Which he is, of course, but the ways in which he is--his vigorous exercise of unilateral assassination and detention without end; his continuation of our wars of terror abroad; his stalwart support for the military/financial combine, etc.--are seen as virtues by the American media and political elites, and by Romney.
The Democrats have a history of exploiting euphemisms and playing semantic games. For example, what was once called eugenics or population control is now called planned parenthood or women's reproductive rights. Another example, what was once called slavery is now called redistributive change and social justice. And another example, what was once called disenfranchisement is now called a civil right.
If the urban dictionary is to serve as a guide, then corrupting language is a far simpler enterprise than one would naturally imagine. What is intended to serve as a facility for communication also serves to promote denigration of individual dignity and devaluation of human life. I suppose everything in our world has an inherent duality and can be exploited at will.
Shorter-Ronnie, good, Barry, bad.
"It's humor from the girl's point of view. The vibe you get from that is that men are weird and women have to try to play along with the fantasy."
That was humor?
The video isn't particularly crude. But it is stupid.
And
Tasteless
Insulting to the intelligence of women.
Disrespectful to those who do treat sexual relationships with respect
Trivializing of the issues
Demeaning to women, reducing us to vaginas and one night stands
Crass
Smarmy
Supercillious
Cringe worthy
I can think of some more adjectives, like counter productive and will backfire with the majority of the American public outside of the brain dead hipster, college age liberal student demographic.
My first time, I was drugged unconscious and raped. Yes, I voted Obama in 2008. Now I won't leave my drink unattended. Won't be fooled again.
Reagan's joke was a drug reference about shooting up heroin. It only hurts for a minute, and then it feels just great.
"...only the ugly white girls go for black guys."
Bravo, sir: racism, sexism, and stupidity...all in only nine words.
Robert Cook,
Oh, please...such a hubbub over bupkus. There are many more serious things about Obama that should inspire outrage.
Again, Mr. Cook, there is no outrage. The only people saying there is outrage are Obama supporters trying to portray Republicans as prudes, when the people poking fun at Ms. Dunham's effort were alternately amused and embarrassed by its gobsmackingly craptastic lameness. You might as well say that Iowahawk's celebrated takedown of the "Life of Julia" expresses "outrage." The phrase you are looking for is "light mockery."
Bender wrote:
"It was then that the MSM informed us that "everyone knew" that the word "scumbag" was slang for a used condom. Well, it was news to me, and probably 99 percent of other people who had ever heard or used the word."
News to me too. But if that's the case, then applying the term "scumbag" to Billy Jeff is truly a case of finding le mot juste.
What's so lame about the Obama ad is that it's an attempt to bring back Obama girl. Remember her?
That was a grass roots, silly thing. The campaign is attempting to revive it!
"That video probably had more to do with shaping Obama's complicated public image — young and exciting but maybe a bit shallow — than any Internet appeal devised by the candidate's own aides."
You got to be some kind of idiot to think people voted for Obama because of Obama Girl. And to try to resurrect that? Hey, bring back the Macarena, you fad fuckwits.
Can you imagine the Macarena playing for four years? We need something new! New song! Quit regurgitating your stale, pathetic, very old and creepy socialist fantasy into our youth!
I never say Reagan's comments as a sexual metaphor. In sports and many physical activities, you hear and have the "it only hurts the first time" experience: getting tackled, catching an elbow in basketball, flipping over in a kayak while running a rapid,... (These all hurt, but you get used to it.)
For me, sex didn't hurt the first time, nor any time. Of course, I never had sex with Esther Zuckerman.
I thought scumbag was like douchebag.
"I thought scumbag was like douchebag."
Thanks for the unexpected laugh. :)
"Bravo, sir: racism, sexism, and stupidity...all in only nine words."
Spike Lee: “I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.”
How is that even remotely sexual? Please. What a pathetic asshole that writer is.
There is another problem with establishing equivalence. The Dunham "first time" was produced in the context of walking and talking vaginas, breasts on parade, Flukes exploiting other people's labor, elective abortion as human rights violations, normalization of dysfunctional behaviors, etc. The Democrats have done their best to gain an advantage through exploiting people's base nature and differentials between individuals, classes, and groups of people. The Dunham video can be interpreted in this context.
That was humor?
Seinfeld did that kind of humor all the time. "Are those the panties that your mother laid out for you?"
Or sponge-worthy.
Or the masturbation contest.
A lot of Seinfeld's humor came from fear about sex and intimacy.
This show is doing something similar. You go home with a man from a party. You don't know him well. And then he starts with a weird sex fantasy.
"That was good. That was good. I almost came."
They undercut the humor by showing the sex, and also by shooting it in a dark way. But the humor is there, in the writing, I think.
It's like a Seinfeld episode, except with graphic sex and no laughs. But it has the same feeling of awkward ambivalence about intimacy.
hey, they had to replace Obama Girl!
It's like in Bewitched when they brought in a new Darrin and we weren't supposed to notice.
Even Obama Girl has dumped you. Now that's just sad.
"I thought scumbag was like douchebag."
No. One catches, the other pitches...as it were.
I read the anecdote and I fail to see any sexual theme in it. As a doctor, I've said and heard similar things. "This will only hurt a little bit and just for a secons." I think the Obamatons have sex--and sado-masochistic sex--on the brain as well as being desperate in the days leading up to their guy's getting fed a can of whup ass by Mitt Romney.
I am old enough to remember this, but do not remember anyone thinking this was sexual.
Classic case of projection.
Does the Left think of anything other than sex?
Yank chain. Check.
My all time favorite Reaganism was when a reporter questioned him about a politically incorrect ethnic joke he was overheard telling the day before and Reagan replied "I was just using that as an example of the kind of joke that I do not approve of." ☺
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