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Just when you thought you'd had enough of prominent women in politics called Sarah, here comes another one. All of a sudden, the Other Sarah our own First Lady, Mrs Brown is emerging from the shadows.
We've got used to Carla Bruni on the cover of Vanity Fair and seeing Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and now that awful Palin woman everywhere. Through it all, Gordon's wife has remained invisible.
No longer. This week our Sarah the First Sarah, if you like has been everywhere. At a photocall at the Natural History Museum with Naomi Campbell and Erin O'Connor plugging Naomi's annual charity extravaganza Fashion for Relief. Appearing in a pristine white suit as part of a cover story for Eve magazine with her new mates Patsy Kensit and Davina McCall. Ranting in Elle magazine about her campaign to save the 500,000 women who die in childbirth across the world every year.
For the ultra-discreet and private Mrs Brown and if anyone is the Anti-Palin, it's her this is unprecedented. It even looks like a bit of an announcement: Hello! I exist too!
You have to wonder whether it's entirely of her own making or whether she has been, shall we say, encouraged. After all, it's not as if the Brown family couldn't do with a bit of good publicity at the moment, is it?
What a shame it's too little, too late. This Sarah has spectacularly mistimed her emergence. A year ago she could easily have been Gordon's best asset. Unlike her bespectacled American namesake, she is someone who actually achieves things, quietly and modestly.
The woman is a charity powerhouse. She has campaigned against domestic violence, raised funds for breast cancer and set up a foundation, Piggy Bank Kids, in memory of her daughter Jennifer, who died at 10 days old.
Never one to waste a networking opportunity, she has even dragooned Carla Bruni into the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. All this and she even vaguely has a sense of humour. On being photographed unflatteringly with Carla she said: Well, I didn't stand a chance, did I? I mean, I was standing next to a supermodel.
In her previous incarnation as a public relations exec, she was supposed to have invented the ground-breaking concept of integrity PR. So why have we learned next to nothing about her until now? Too much integrity: zero PR. This last-ditch push for recognition is 14 months overdue.
Why has Labour allowed an intelligent, dynamic and campaigning woman to stay under wraps? Perhaps after having seen what happened to Cherie vilified, ridiculed, trashed Sarah Brown took fright. But this is cowardly. She is right to use her profile and connections to promote deserving causes and to hell with anyone who criticises her for it.
Come on, our Sarah, give Palin a run for her money. Show us what you're made of. Push the moose-eating creationist off the front
page. You never know, we might even like you.
Reader views (5)
Michelle Obama showed absolutely no class or respect for those who died at ground zero (the first attack on America by ISLAM)
Jackie Kennedy would have had her kid there, dressed, and cued on how to lay a flower respectfully on a memorial, (not flung like daddy B.O. did)
The one photo op she should appear in as a hopeful 1st lady and she is so Anti-American she wouldn't go?
Are she and B.O. headed for a divorce?
- Woman Citizen, Scottsdale arizona, 15/09/2008 04:21
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John of Bangkok can not have been reading the news reports thoroughly. Did I or did I not read yesterday that Sarah Palin had vowed not to rule out going to war with Russia over the conflicts on it's borders? Do we REALLY want someone who is more aggressive and stupid than George Bush as even Vice President of the U.S.A., let alone potential eventual President? I think not!
- Tony Whitmarsh, Melbourne, Australia, 14/09/2008 05:50
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John in Bangkok.
It's not a case of whether Palin is "on the left" or on the right; the woman has an unsure grasp of geopolitics, and is clearly intellectually shallow, therefore ought to stay in Smalltown, Alaska, where the damage she can do is - although possibly grievous - limited.
- Brian Clacey, Croydon, 12/09/2008 09:16
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Great to hear about someone other than Sarah Palin. quite honestly, I'm amazed at all the press Palin gets......she is so totally unqualified to be vice-president let alone president of the US. If that were to happen the world will be a much much much more dangerous place.
Wake up John!
- Intelligent Human, USA, 11/09/2008 15:46
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It's articles like this that make you really hope McCain/Palin win. I bet the writer has never had a proper job, done a decent days work or even got her hands dirty. Just another sneering, metroplitan, motor mouth. It's OK to support women, just so long as they're on the left. I never cease to be amazed at the amount of bile and venom the sisterhood reserves for any woman on the right.
- John, Bangkok, Thailand, 11/09/2008 10:46
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