The Hustler Hustled

The svelte 46-year-old Illinois senator comes across as a man who can facedown most political arguments and also trade dukes if need be with anyone threatening him or his family. But after a spot of ambush journalism while in the German capital, one starts to wonder if, well, maybe he's a bit of a wuss.

After being photographed smiling accommodatingly with a young German woman in a Berlin gym, Obama was horrified to find out that the "fan" who he thought was getting a personal snap, was in fact a reporter for the Bild Zeitung tabloid.

Not only did the newspaper reproduce the young lady's photo of the pair without the permission of the presumed presidential candidate's permission but, worse still, she submitted an accompanying article which alluded to Obama's "firm rear end," "well-trained arms," and ended with the phrase, "WHAT A MAN!"

Having been first hijacked in the name of popular journalism and then exploited as presidential eye-candy, Obama was apparently wounded by the story: "Bild reporter in the gym with Obama," published the day after his triumphant speech at Berlin's Victory Column on July 24.

The senator-reduced-to-mere-sex-object told The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in an interview published over the weekend, that he had been conned and "hustled".

While the Times article didn't actually mention any whining, there was a hint of the wounded victim about Obama's recollection of the event.

Media player Obama outplayed by Bild reporter

"I'm just realizing what I've got to become accustomed to," he tells Dowd in the article. "The fact that I was played like that at the gym. ... 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 (his assistant) takes the picture."

Maybe Judith Bonesky, the "ordinary German girl," should have been working out in a filthy trench coat and a Trilby hat with a "Press" card stuck in its band, just so everyone knew she was a media parasite.

Despite his protestations, no tangible harm seems to have come from the Bild article -- unless you count the fact Obama showed the same need to control the press exhibited by politicians since time the beginning of politicking.