As long as he stays overseas

Roger Cohen's got an Op-Ed in the Times about how much the French love Barack Obama.

Cohen doesn't mention the profound problem, of course, of a country supposedly in love with a black American that's only got one black Frenchman in parliament.

But right now, in French eyes, there’s a single good American: the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Barack Obama. His book, “The Audacity of Hope,” is a best seller. His face is everywhere, sometimes in socialist realist images evoking Che Guevara.

An online support committee has drawn all-star support, including the fashion designer Sonia Rykiel, the Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the writer-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Yves Saint Laurent.

Out in the troubled suburbs, with their large African and Arab populations and broad mistrust of a political system that has produced one black parliamentarian among the 555 representing mainland France, Obama is an urban legend. In France at least, he has high-low appeal.