Scarlett Johansson says she was left shamefaced following the “sexist” firestorm that followed her e-mail buddy comments about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In June, the Golden Globe-nominated actress, an devout Obama supporter, told the Web site Politico.com that she and the Illinois senator had been trading e-mails.

Obama later told reporters that Scarlett, 23, does not have his personal e-mail address, and that his assistant forwarded only one message to the star.

“It seemed to me to be like a product of extreme sexism,” Scarlett said in an interview for her new Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona on Tuesday.

“I kept thinking to myself, ‘God, if this was just, like, Kal Penn or George Clooney, or any of the other [Obama] surrogates or supporters … there wouldn’t be [any] question about it. Nobody would even talk about it.”

“I was merely trying to express my delight at Obama’s commitment in his campaign in every aspect, and his interest and his support [in] his surrogates, and his staff and his fellows, and how wonderful and refreshing that is,” Scarlett insists. “And it was manipulated into such an unfortunate media frenzy of kind of a non-story.”

Do you think the media hoopla over the Obama-Johansson e-mails was the result of sexism?