Jeb Bush Would Like Your Electoral Cherry, Young Man

I promise I'll be gentle

[contextly_sidebar id="6pF7Yq7gapCIG55ntENPNdGDd3DC7J4y"]After performing well below even his own pitifully low expectations in the Iowa caucuses and spending roughly $2,884 for every one of the pitifully few votes he won there, Jeb! Bush continued on to New Hampshire, where he headed straight for the platform where the Awkward Train was boarding. Or maybe not that straight after all: In an effort to be hip and with it, in the casual vernacular that so many of the young folk are "into" these days, Jeb went with an awkward double-entendre to try and woo a first-time voter in the Granite State, according to WaPo reporter Ed O'Keefe:  

The young man apparently backed away, smiling and saying he was flattered and everything, but that he wasn't quite ready to take the relationship to that, or any, level.

[contextly_sidebar id="vkUeZcbt6OtYvono7IpoeG11yq9EPVBI"]Now, if this sounds vaguely familiar, it's prolly because four years ago, Lena Dunham created a great big ol' wingnut freakout in an ad where she talked about her "first time," when she voted for Barack Obama in some kind of freaky electoral version of Mandingo Jungle Fever. Predictably, pearls were fainted on, sofas were sniffed, and smelling salts were clutched, because here was a lady talking about voting as if it were the sexx with a sexxay black man.

Now, as far as we can tell, no one's reacting to Jeb's little foe paw with anything like a similar level of indignation, even though it has the added implication of homosexxical sexing. This is possibly because while Barry Bamz is legitimately sexxy and therefore a threat to the honor of white virgins everywhere, no one can imagine anyone -- straight, gay, or anime fan -- lustfully panting to Jeb, "Take me now, you magnificent stallion!" Instead, the reactions ran more along these lines:

• my first was awkward, kinda pathetic and left a weird taste in my mouth. So basically Jeb's campaign

• why does this family have such an awful grasp of the English language? it's not like they ever spoke anything else

• no....no, Jeb. Wrong thing.

• So it will just end in pain and regret?

A few even remembered the Lena Dunham ad, either to suggest that Jeb's fumble was no big deal, or to note that she wore it better.

Pity poor Jeb Bush. Not even visible enough to stir up a moral panic. Still, there was at least one salubrious (no, not lubricious, get a goddamn dictionary) side effect of what, for a candidate that anyone was paying attention to, would have been a gaffe. It reminded us of a very fine scene from the first season of The Wire (you should click this linky for the superior version of the scene, which is not embeddable, damn the YouTubes, so here is a merely OK version instead):

We would far rather watch The Wire than anything involving Jeb Bush, is what we're saying. If you need us, we'll be in our Bunk.

[ Ed O'Keefe on Twitter via Jezebel ]