Click here to watch "Education."

Responding to a Barack Obama TV ad (subscription), John McCain's campaign took to the airwaves Tuesday evening to push back on the issue of education and turn the tables on the Illinois senator. Their response ad, however, has drawn an impassioned rebuke from Obama.

"Education" (subscription) does little to respond to the Obama campaign's claims about McCain's record on the subject, but rather takes a dig at the Illinois senator by citing an article in Education Week that says Obama "hasn't made a significant mark on education." The spot then goes further, suggesting that "Obama's one accomplishment" on education legislation was to pass a bill in Illinois that approved teaching ''comprehensive sex education ... to kindergartners." "Learning about sex before learning to read?" an announcer wonders, concluding that Obama is "wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

The ad prompted one of the most pointed rebuttals yet from the Obama camp. Spokesman Bill Burton called it "shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls." He added: "Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why."

Another spat broke out between the rival camps yesterday over a particular women's cosmetic product. On the trail in Virginia, Obama was mocking the notion that McCain and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin represent change agents, when he told a crowd: "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig." The phrase -- an idiom which McCain himself has used in reference to Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan -- is a relatively common analogy, but it evoked a line that Palin used while accepting her party's nomination in Minnesota, when she told the audience that the only "difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull" is "lipstick."

The McCain campaign pounced on Obama's comments, releasing a Web ad this morning. The spot shows a clip of CBS anchor Katie Couric lamenting "the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life" and accuses Obama of using a sexist smear against Palin.

In remarks this morning, Obama dismissed the controversy as an example of "phony outrage and Swift boat politics." Yesterday, Obama adviser Anita Dunn called ad a "pathetic attempt to play the gender card" and charged: "This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run."