Is Lena Dunham’s latest column offensive? Or just not that funny?

Lena Dunham has been been slammed over a recent article published in the New Yorker magazine, in which readers were asked to guess whether statements referred to Dunham’s boyfriend or her dog.

The article “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz” is clearly intended as satire, but Dunham has been accused by some of playing into anti-Semitic stereotypes.

The 28-year-old Girls creator self-identifies as half Jewish (her father is Protestant and her mother is Jewish) and has previously described herself as “very culturally Jewish, although that’s the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say”.

Her current boyfriend Jack Antonoff is Jewish and her dog Lamby has no obvious religious affiliations.

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Some of the comparisons in the article are fairly innocuous (“2. We love to spend hours in bed together on Sunday mornings.”), but others such as “13. He doesn’t tip” and the following have been accused of playing into shallow and offensive tropes about Jewish people.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a response to the piece calling it “tasteless”.

“Some will certainly find Lena Dunham’s stereotypes about cheap Jews offensive,” national director Abraham H Foxman said in a statement. “Others will take issue with the very idea of comparing a dog and a Jewish boyfriend.

“The piece is particularly troubling because it evokes memories of the “No Jews or Dogs Allowed” signs from our own early history in this country.”

Dunham and rescue dog Lamby.

New Yorker editor David Remnick defended the piece on Twitter, citing a long list of comedians drawing on their Jewish cultural heritage.

But other Twitter users fell mainly into two camps; those who were offended by it and those who thought it just wasn’t all that funny. Either way, the joke clearly fell flat.

Dunham has always been a divisive character. It is not the first time her sense of humour or her racial politics have come under fire.

Previously she has been accused of not representing people of colour in her television show (although, some argue it would be more problematic to do so because that is not her lived experience).

She was also called Islamaphobic for a picture posted on her Instagram where she dons a fake hijab.

The offensive tweet.

Her show, Girls pushes the boundaries when it comes to feminism and offers realistic representations of sex and the female body– previously not seen on mainstream television.

Dunham’s boyfriend, musician Jack Antonoff.

While some would argue it is her right to poke fun at her cultural heritage, Dunham could easily have written a similar piece without invoking humour around her partner’s Jewishness — and without offending anyone. Except, you know, men maybe.

Depending on who you are, comparing a boy to a dog could be seen as pretty funny. (I, for one, am from the “girls rule, boys drool” camp.)

Either way, whether you like her or not, Dunham is young, successful and bound to make the occasional f*ckup.

 Are you offended by Dunham’s column?