Is the Obama campaign taking commercial ideas from Vladimir Putin?

I see the Obama campaign has a new YouTube ad featuring Girls star (and fellow Oberlin alum!) Lena Dunham: "Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy," she says, referring to casting your first ballot for Obama. (What were you thinking?) It’s a clever conceit, but ...

I see the Obama campaign has a new YouTube ad featuring Girls star (and fellow Oberlin alum!) Lena Dunham:

"Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy," she says, referring to casting your first ballot for Obama. (What were you thinking?)

It's a clever conceit, but feels a bit familiar. Perhaps because the same joke was used in an ad for Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign earlier this year:

I see the Obama campaign has a new YouTube ad featuring Girls star (and fellow Oberlin alum!) Lena Dunham:

"Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy," she says, referring to casting your first ballot for Obama. (What were you thinking?)

It’s a clever conceit, but feels a bit familiar. Perhaps because the same joke was used in an ad for Vladimir Putin’s presidential campaign earlier this year:

A suggestive ad rallying support for Putin’s presidential campaign shows a young woman seeking a fortune-teller’s advice. "Let’s find out, cutie, who is intended to you by destiny," the mystic says. The girl replies, "You know. I wish it to be for love — It is my first time."

Here’s that one:

Another ad from the same campaign featured a doctor telling a young woman, "The main thing is to be sure it’s safe. Especially the first time."

Let’s just hope the campaign doesn’t delve further into the Putin catalog.

Update: Looks like Reagan may have beaten Putin to this joke by a few years. 

Also, whether you like the Dunham commercial or not, describing it as "further proof we live in a fallen world destined for hell fire" is um… going a bit far.  

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy  Twitter: @joshuakeating

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