Employing an inordinate number of pastry puns and an inexplicable knowledge of the first family’s marital harmony, the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser unleashed a torrent of outrage toward President Obama for “using the solemn occasion of Nelson Mandela’s memorial service Tuesday to act like a hormone-ravaged frat boy on a road trip to a strip bar.”
The columnist’s evidence for such moral depravity? A series of photos showing the President smiling and laughing with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt at Mandela’s service, all while First Lady Michelle Obama appears to be shooting her husband a scornful glare.
You might not be all that familiar if you aren’t a Twitter user, presumably because the photos were rightly treated as a goofy meme more than a news story. But Peyser, writing in her column on Thursday, somehow knows it’s a sign of trouble in paradise for Obama.
In front of 91 world leaders, the mourning nation of South Africa and Obama’s clearly furious wife, Michelle, the president flirted, giggled, whispered like a recalcitrant child and made a damn fool of himself at first sight of Denmark’s voluptuously curvy and married prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
Later in the column, Peyser observed what she deemed a particularly unsavory interaction between Obama and Thorning-Schmidt.
Thorning-Schmidt placed her hands dangerously close to Obama’s side. The president’s cackling head moved inches from the Danish tart’s and yards away from his wife’s. Obama then proceeded to absorb body heat from the Dane, which he won’t be feeling at home for a long time.
It’s unclear how Peyser knows that the first lady was actually miffed, and not simply photographed at a few ill-timed moments. Peyser wasn’t at Mandela’s service, nor does she cite any source to back her assumptions. Nevertheless, Peyser insists that President Obama owes his wife — nay, the world — an apology.
President Obama has some ’splaining to do. To the woman he married. To his daughters. To the people of South Africa. And to the scandalized folks here at home. He owes the world an apology.
And don’t think Thorning-Schmidt was let off the hook either! Peyser cooked up a batch of sexually-charged labels drawn from both baked goods and Thorning-Schmidt’s nationality. The prime minister of Denmark, Peyser reminds readers throughout the column, is Danish.
Not just any Dane, but a “Danish pastry,” “Danish hellcat,” and “cross-legged Danish cupcake.”
Update: A photographer who actually attended the service made it clear that the first lady’s “stern look was captured by chance.”
