Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

A Political Storm as Conservatives Rage Over Lena Dunham’s “First Time” Video for Obama

Perhaps it is entirely no surprise that HBO’s Lena Dunham — whose frankly sexual cable television series “Girls” is a huge hit — has caused a wave of controversy with a new campaign video urging the reelection of President Barack Obama.

It’s titled “Your First Time,” and Dunham — in her typical ironically clever hipster tone — coyly talks about voting as if you were losing your virginity.

Says Dunham in the video: “My first time voting was amazing. It was this line in the sand — before, I was a girl, now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.”

To be fair, this is much less racy than any five minutes of “Girls,” but you can see the problem for some.

Thus, since it was released via the Obama campaign, the edgy video has been decried by conservatives in no uncertain terms, such as this posting on Twitter from John Nolte, editor at large at Breitbart News.

Here is his tweet, which was like many:

Oddly enough, the conservatives’ most beloved President — Ronald Reagan — once made a pretty similar joke: “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.”

Dunham, who is now tweeting from an international vacation, does not seem to care much what anyone thinks, as you can see from her reaction tweet below:

Here’s the Dunham video, so judge for yourself:

I am also adding Hollywood writer/director Joss Whedon’s pretty caustic spoof about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and zombies, which will surely bring a second round of criticism:

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First the NSA came for, well, jeez pretty much everybody’s data at this point, and I said nothing because wait how does this joke work

— Parker Higgins via Twitter