So there's an YouTube video released by the Obama campaign that has the conservatives completely up in arms.



No, really. They are going completely apeshit over this video. Oh, God forbid a young woman would ask her peers to cast their first ballot for the President. They are so concerned about Lena Dunham "comparing voting with losing one's virginity." Oh, so vulgar. And - OMG - she wants young (white) girls to be seduced by that black guy. Noooo.

Though I rather suspect that the screamfest is indicative that President Obama's advantage among women - especially young women - is about to make conservatives cry, let's get a few things straight here just for a second.

The screeching and poutrage is coming from a political movement that has, just in recent history, produced numerous candidates for federal office that believe that rape is a God-intended "method of conception" and that victims of rape and incest should be forced by the government to carry their rapists' children to term. One of them is the guy who is the only Senate candidate this movement's presidential nominee has cut an ad for.

This noise is coming from a political faction in this country that believes that employers - not individuals - deserve the freedom of conscience to decide whether or not their employees should have coverage for birth control in health insurance that is part of their compensation package. This is from a faction that extols the virtues of a radio talk show host who calls young women 'sluts' for wanting to testify on women's reproductive health.

This hu-ha is emanating from people who not only do not believe in a woman's right to control her own health care decisions and her body, but also reject a woman's right to equal pay for equal work. This is from people who believe in firing teachers (mostly women) and increases class sizes to make learning difficult for our children.

This is a 'movement' that believes that a working single mom who needs food stamps to feed her children or subsidized housing to put a roof over her family's head is a moocher. This is a political party whose nominee stood feet away from the President of the United States, a son of a single mother, and declared that only if these women would get married before they have kids, gun violence would go away.

This ridiculous table-pounding is coming from a group of people whose idea of balancing the federal budget is to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, an institution that is not only a stellar provider of reproductive care for men and women (that includes everything from contraception to prenatal care to sex education to yes, when required, abortion services) but a primary health care provider for hundreds of thousands of women, providing a quarter-million breast cancer screenings and a similar number of cervical cancer screenings every year.

This comes from a "movement" whose most radical elements go around killing doctors, - and its most radical thoughts are expounded every day on the airwaves by its most ardent and famous media heads, whether or not they take any responsibility for the violence.

These are the people that want to tell us that a funny, well-produced, and damned good ad asking young women to consider the issues carefully while they vote is offensive? These are the people telling us that the President's campaign is being vulgar? Really?

This must be a joke. A very sick joke.