Organization: Alexa Crawls

Poor Lady Gaga .

She gets all dolled up - okay, in little more than her underwear - and treks out to Citi Field to catch a Mets game. She doesn't arrive until the fifth inning and she's shocked, shocked to find photographers there.

Then she did what any woman who wants to stay incognito at a ball game would do - strip down to her bra and panties. They were studded, just what you want covering your posterior on a steel stadium seat, no?

Then, for good measure, she stood up to flip the bird at the offending lensmen in front of numerous Little Leaguers actually trying to enjoy baseball on a Thursday afternoon in June.

The lensmen weren't the paparazzi she sings about, but professional sports photographers who were probably paying more attention to the game than to Herself.

All these dramatics wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that she just released a new single, would it?

It's hard to picture actual ladies like Audrey Hepburn or Jackie O flipping the bird - the double bird no less. It's even hard to picture Madonna, to whom Gaga is most compared, engaging in such declasse behavior in a family venue.

But the undeniably talented musician had already chosen marketing over manners a day earlier, when she showed up as a beekeeper at her little sister Natali's high school graduation.

Natali's already living in Lady Gargantua's shadow, and it should have been her day to shine. Wouldn't it have been classy for Miss Thing to hang back in sunglasses and pearls and let Li'l Sis have the spotlight?

Nah, this is all about marketing and business, which Lady Gaga is as good at as she is at dance music. She has three out of the top 25 songs downloaded on iTunes of all time and, as of last month, she'd sold 40 million singles and 15 million albums.

Like her style icon Madonna, she's brilliant at realizing the street is her dance floor, the sidewalk her stage - even her skivvies are costumes. Wherever Lady Gaga is, theater is.

Image, and getting that image swirling around the globe, is everything in the digital age.

In her new single, "Alejandro," all the "shocking" visuals on the checklist are there:

Ripped, shirtless guys who look like Nazi stormtroopers dance around. Check.

Gaga simulates sex with one of them in her underwear. Check.

Gaga puts on a red latex nun's habit and does outrageous things to get controversy going in the Catholic press. Check.

Hmmm . . . Sounds familiar. Wasn't there someone else who messed around with Catholic iconography in a music video? Oh yeah, Madonna, in "Like A Prayer!"

Except then, it wasn't just for marketing purposes. Madonna 's actually had meaning, a story. When she hooked up with the saint, it was sexier, yet somehow Okay for Little Leaguers to see.

You know. Like a lady.

jmolloy@nydailynews.com