Lena Dunham 'First Time' Voting Commercial Controversy (VIDEO)

"In her very young career, Lena Dunham has distinguished herself as her generation's preeminent observer of female social and sexual mores. From her first film, Tiny Furniture, to her oft-acclaimed and sometimes-reviled HBO series Girls, Dunham creates works of video pointillism. Her narratives and characters don't make a whole lot of sense in the medium view (really, there are no black people in Brooklyn?), but from afar they're unmistakably recognizable. From up close, inside a particular scene or bit of dialogue, she can be achingly brilliant and pure.

It should come as no surprise then that her impish video imploring young women to vote for Barack Obama—because on the first time "you wanna to do it with a great guy"—works in the same mode and has elicited similarly polarizing reactions. In just 24 hours, her ad has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube and an almost equal numbers of likes and dislikes.

As Amanda Marcotte points out at Slate, the video has provoked an "unhinged, crazy reaction" from conservatives, who seemingly can't tolerate "an accomplished single woman who doesn't blush at the mention of sex." Marcotte is right to put the controversy over the video in the context of the GOP's freak out over women and sex (see Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Foster Friess, etc.), and the Dunham ad is undeniably timed by the Obama campaign to reach undecided, young female voters."* Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, and Ben Mankiewicz (Host, Turner Classic Movies) break down Dunham's Obama ad and the slew of outrage it has stirred.