Dowd: Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning

I miss TimesSelect.

I miss the good old days when the New York Times made online readers pay to read its columnists.

Now, it's all there for the clicking again.

"Rediscover the unique insights and perspectives of The Times's award-winning Op-Ed columnists."

Some things are better left not rediscovered.

In today's Times, Maureen Dowd writes about Barack Obama's triumphant world tour, "Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning."

She thinks the Obama-palooza Tour had the makings of a French movie.

Passing acquaintances collide in a moment of transcendent passion. They look at each other shyly and touch tenderly during their Paris cinq à sept, exchange some existential thoughts under exquisite chandeliers, and — tant pis — go their separate ways.

Sarko, back to Carla Bruni. Obama, forward to Gordon Brown. A Man and a Man. All it needed was a lush score and Claude Lelouch.

Even for Sarkozy the American, who loves everything in our culture from Sylvester Stallone to Gloria Gaynor, it was a wild gush over a new Washington crush.

Sarko is right and Barack is left. One had a Jewish grandfather, the other a Muslim one. The French president is a frenetic bumper car; the Illinois senator is, as he said of the king of Jordan’s Mercedes 600, “a smooth ride.”

But the son of a Hungarian, who picked a lock to break into the French ruling class, embraced a fellow outsider and child of an immigrant who had also busted into the political aristocracy with a foreign-sounding name.

After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect.

“You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased the candidate after the amorous joint press conference, as he flew from Paris to London for the finale of his grand tour.

“I think we could work well together,” he said of Sarko, smiling broadly.

Is that a typical sort of remark from a member of the press to the presumptive Democrat nominee for president?

"You must want a cigarette after that," I teased the candidate after the amorous joint press conference...

I am creeped out by Dowd the tease.

She just loves to tease Obama.

She teases him about his ears. She teases him about the way his wife treats him.

But I think the flirty Dowd really pushed it too far with the cigarette comment.

Imagine what the reaction would be if a male member of the press said something like that to a female candidate.

It would be deemed demeaning and highly inappropriate.

...Obama kept his cool through a week where he was treated as a cross between the Dalai Lama and Johnny Depp.

A private prayer he left in the holy Western Wall in Jerusalem was snatched out by a student at a Jewish seminary and published in a local newspaper. In Berlin, the tabloid Bild sent an attractive blonde reporter to stalk Obama at the Ritz-Carlton gym as he exercised with his body man, Reggie Love. She then wrote a tell-all, enthusing, “I’m getting hot, and not from the workout,” and concluding, “What a man.”

Obama marveled: “I’m just realizing what I’ve got to become accustomed to. The fact that I was played like that at the gym. Do you remember ‘The Color of Money’ with Paul Newman? And Forest Whitaker is sort of sitting there, acting like he doesn’t know how to play pool. And then he hustles the hustler. She hustled us. We walk into the gym. She’s already on the treadmill. She looks like just an ordinary German girl. She smiles and sort of waves, shyly, but doesn’t go out of her way to say anything. As I’m walking out, she says: ‘Oh, can I have a picture? I’m a big fan.’ Reggie takes the picture.”

I ask him if he found it a bit creepy that she described his T-shirt as smelling like “fabric softener with spring scent.”

He looked nonplused: “Did she describe what my T-shirt smelled like?”

Really. Who's doing the sniffing and swooning here?

I find it creepy for Dowd to be asking Obama if he found it creepy that an attractive blonde reporter was talking about the smell of his T-shirt.

Dowd has the opportunity to ask Obama some questions, possibly the next president of the United States, and she's talking about that fluff?

She's making weird remarks about Obama wanting a cigarette after the press conference with the Obamarized Sarkozy?

Inappropriate. Unprofessional. Bizarre. Creepy.

Are we electing a president or choosing the next cover boy for People's "Sexiest Man Alive" issue?

Is she writing a gossip column for a bubble gum teen magazine or doing analysis for a reputable news outlet?

What an embarrassment!