Thread: Vicente Fox chides legislators for investigating wife

Forgive me. I couldn't help myself:

See the photo accompanying the article - http://www.chicagoreader.com/hottype/2005/050506_1.html

For the week of May 6, 2005
By Michael Miner



Not That There's Anything Wrong With That
The publisher's wife declares--in print--that the former editor of the Sun-Times has a thing for ladies' shoes.

One of life's lower points is the discovery that other people think you're weird. Not dangerously weird, not even so weird they don't enjoy your company. But a little quirkier than you want anyone to think you are.

When I spoke by phone the other day with Michael Cooke, editor of the New York Daily News, he sounded uncharacteristically perturbed. A rash of e-mail from his old newspaper, the Sun-Times, was informing him that a woman he'd known for nearly 30 years had identified him in print that morning as a man with a quirk. The woman, Jennifer Hunter, is the wife of the publisher of the Sun-Times, John Cruickshank, with whom Cooke arrived from Vancouver five years ago to run the paper. "I love them both dearly," said Cooke.

Yet Hunter, an editorial writer and columnist at her husband's paper who on April 27 was excoriating fashionable women's shoes, had gone off on the following tangent: "One reason I am convinced that pointy shoes are a male plot to demean women is that a former male editor at the Sun-Times had a fetish for women's footwear. He thought they were intensely sexy -- if infantalizing a woman by making her totter in heels down the hall like a toddler is really sexy -- and he kept commissioning stories about them, over the protests of women staff members. When Vicente Fox came to town last year, the main news for this editor was not the Mexican president's message, but Mrs. Fox's footwear. We ran an unconscionable number of photos of Mrs. Fox in the paper -- from the knee down."

Hunter wasn't done. "My former editor," her column continued, "recently ran a week of shoe stories at his new paper, the New York Daily News, including a shoe horoscope, which he kindly passed along. Here is mine, Capricorn: 'Normally impervious to fashion slavery, this spring you're swooning for the latest footwear. [Yeah, right, patent leather Birkenstocks.] For one big office event, you even abandoned sensible shoes for the global gypsy look. [Global gypsy? They've got the wrong crystal ball.] And with painful-pointy on the way out, you're in heaven.' [That part's true. How did they know?]"

"The woman's mad," said Cooke, when I called. "Let's take the paragraph that says 'When Vicente Fox came to town last year.' Well, for accuracy's sake, the main news of that visit was President Fox's message -- front page center, dictated by me. The Sun-Times did not run an unconscionable number of photographs of his wife's shoes. We ran one. She happened to be wearing a pair of remarkable shoes."

Cooke went on, now referring to Hunter, "I like the woman. She's actually one of my best friends. So there you go. I think she's serious about her view of footwear. I can't imagine that she wants to be mean to me. But jeepers. There's a multibillion-dollar shoe industry, and it has nothing to do with men. I'll tell you one thing -- here you go! -- we did run some shoe stories here [at the Daily News] a couple of weeks ago, and we had a tiny contest to win $2,000 for a shoe-shopping spree at Macy's. We ran a coupon, and you had to cut it out, put it in an envelope, buy a stamp -- and we had 17,000 entries! I assume most of them were women."

I asked if he intended to call Hunter.

"We're having a vigorous e-mail correspondence as we speak," he said. "It's going very well. It's ended up with us saying to each other, 'I love you.'"

Cooke wasn't as sure as he would have liked that the Sun-Times ran only one photo of President Fox's wife's shoes during her trip to Chicago last June. Actually the paper ran two -- not to mention the photo of the first lady's legs and the one of her decolletage. On the shoe front, the picture Cooke recalled was the one captioned "Look at those shoes: Mexico's glamorous first lady, Marta Sahagun, sports a pair of gold slingbacks Wednesday while dedicating the new Mexican Consulate office." A few days later the slingbacks reappeared to illustrate a column by Neil Steinberg, who explained, "One foreign-born colleague of mine has the ability to cheerily admit practices in crowded meetings that I would have a hard time admitting to myself in private. Take the shoes worn by Marta Sahagun. . . . Left to my own devices, I don't think I would have perceived her shoes as the ooh-baby objects of sexual fascination that they apparently are in some quarters. . . . But I have been educated, and now realize readers might appreciate one last glimpse at the lust objects that are Mrs. Fox's shoes."

After doing my research I called Cooke again and read him this passage. Is that you? I asked.

"I think it's very clearly a reference to me," he conceded.

And weren't shoe jokes being told at your good-bye party last year?

"There was one joke among a hundred jokes. Oh God," he said. "I asked my wife, 'Do I have a foot fetish?' She said no."

Hunter was much harder to reach. She never returned my calls, but she briefly replied to my e-mail. "This was a column about women's shoes," she asserted. "It was meant to be tongue in cheek and the fact that [it] is being taken seriously by you, a male journalist, confirms my thesis. I have tremendous admiration and respect for my former editor; I think he is a brilliant newspaperman and he's a great friend."

I called Cooke back to ask if Hunter's joshing tone had eluded him too.

"I couldn't possibly comment on that," he said. "I don't want to make things any worse than they are."

It's not my usual policy to clarify the behavior of a wife by talking to the husband, but Cruickshank had surely found himself in the middle.

More . . .

That's hilarious greyparrot.

I tried to find the article on the Sun-Times web site but couldn't locate it in their archives. I think it's obvious Mrs. Fox has a spending problem she is trying to cover up.

Also found another article about the dress auction. It appears there is conflicting information on how many dresses were sold, and what they earned from the auction. One article claims 10 sold for $5,100, while the other says 4 sold for only a $1,100. We need an investigation to find the truth.


news.ft.com

Observer: Auction blocked
>Published: August 2 2005 03:00 | Last updated: August 2 2005 03:00
>>
When Congress challenged Mexico's first lady, Marta Sahagun de Fox, about bills for her world-class wardrobe, she promptly donated 36 of her dresses to charity.

Unfortunately, the Sunday auction was suspended after four of the dresses brought in a mere $1,100.

Fox should have understood the limits of such things.

After all, her Vamos Mexico Foundation never could auction the Mont Blanc fountain pens it purchased for $350,000 in 2002. Those pens, which KPMG originally called "articles of jewellery", were finally given out this year to bus passengers who scratched off winning tickets on bottled water sold at terminals.

>

I think it's obvious Mrs. Fox has a spending problem she is trying to cover up.

No doubt in my mind whatsoever! She does Manolo Blahnik proud.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0805/p06s02-woam.html

August 05, 2005
Mexico's love-hate affair with first lady
Marta Sahagun de Fox, once with presidential dreams, takes heat for expensive clothes and financial questions
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

MEXICO CITY - The blue plastic chairs set up so carefully on the lawn were almost empty. The bidders' paddles laid in a neat, untouched pile on a table. The items, 36 dresses from the world's top designers, hung, rather forlornly, on a rack backstage.

The auction, to benefit poor children with cancer, was supposed to start at 11 a.m. But practically no one showed up.

Marta Sahagun de Fox, Mexico's first lady, a powerful and increasingly controversial figure here, can't seem to do anything right lately. Criticized for having spent too much public money on her wardrobe, the well-heeled Ms. Sahagun, commonly known here as "Marta" or "Martita," hastily donated her favorite outfits to a charity which, in turn, tried to auction them off last Sunday.

"But no one likes Marta," explains Rosio Barrios, a butcher who works in a market next door to the auction space. "So it's not a surprise no one wants to wear her old clothes." President Vicente Fox's biggest mistake, she says, wiping her hands on her orange track suit, "was getting married to Marta Sahagun."

The seemingly daily roasting of Sahagun on TV, in newspapers, and by large numbers of Mexicans generally, recalls the days when Hillary Clinton was the lightning rod in the White House. Like Ms. Clinton, Sahagun has taken a prominent role in her husband's government - much to the dismay of critics. The Fox administration says she is being unfairly targeted by political opportunists.

"In the last few months, a series of publications have come out with the intention of attempting to defame the president or members of his family, trying to raise doubts about their honor and reliability," Mr. Fox said in a statement this week. "In the context of the upcoming [2006] election, these publications are part of a political strategy ... to discredit the administration, debilitate institutions, and denigrate politics."

When Fox came to power in 2000, after seven decades of de facto one-party rule, no one expected his wife would be so high profile. That's because he didn't even have one.

Sahagun, a divorced mother of three, was the bachelor president's chief spokeswoman. But soon, her relationship with the boss - a divorcé himself, with four adopted children - became an open secret. On the first anniversary of his election, the two married.

Sahagun, eschewing the typical ceremonial responsibilities of her position, created waves from the get-go. She started her own foundation - "Vamos Mexico" (Let's Go Mexico) - which collected millions from the country's wealthy and distributes everything from bicycles for rural children to food for hurricane victims. She printed parenting guides, delivered computers to schools, and comforted orphans. Her popularity soared, especially among the poor and lower-middle classes. In a poll conducted by the Mexican think tank GEA, a year after she became first lady, supporters of her husband's PAN party named her as their preferred presidential candidate for 2006.

She did nothing to discourage speculation about her political ambitions. "You will have Marta around for a long time," she told reporters last year. "I think Mexico is ready for a woman president."

But Sahagun never managed to gather as much of a following as the former American president's wife did. By the time she officially announced that she would not be seeking the presidency, she already had a new slew of criticisms to fend off. "Vamos Mexico" was accused of donating less than 30 percent of the $30 million collected to actually help the poor - and of siphoning off public funds from the national lottery. Congress began an investigation.

Since then, at least four unfavorable books, hundreds of unflattering political cartoons, and even a rock song titled "I Did Not Vote for Martita," have made the rounds.

Every week seems to bring a new allegation, ranging from accusations she used the presidential jet for a gambling foray to Las Vegas to rumors she uses witchcraft against her enemies.

Some argue that the focus on Sahagun is a diversion from the real issues of the Fox presidency and the country.

"So much of this is irrelevant gossip and does nothing to contribute to the solving of any of our problems," says Marisol Martin, a prominent legal writer.

Others see it differently, arguing that the focus on Sahagun is neither a distraction nor a political ploy against Fox - but rather is at the very heart of the problems of the administration.

"What is lacking is accountability," argues Martha Lucia Micher, a legislator from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party who heads a congressional investigation into abuse of influence by the Sahagun's sons. "The issue of Marta's clothes stops being trivial when it has to do with public funds ... and with the change that was promised to this country." Sahagun has become, says Micher, symbolic of the country's disappointment with a presidency that carried so much hope.

Sahagun, eschewing the typical ceremonial responsibilities of her position, created waves from the get-go. She started her own foundation - "Vamos Mexico" (Let's Go Mexico) - which collected millions from the country's wealthy and distributes everything from bicycles for rural children to food for hurricane victims.

Oh?

"Vamos Mexico" was accused of donating less than 30 percent of the $30 million collected to actually help the poor

OH MY!

Every week seems to bring a new allegation, ranging from accusations she used the presidential jet for a gambling foray to Las Vegas to rumors she uses witchcraft against her enemies.

OH MY MY! Where is my mojo bag?!?!

The auction, to benefit poor children with cancer, was supposed to start at 11 a.m. But practically no one showed up.

No doubt the few that DID show....were effigy and pinata makers.

They better quit picking on the poor lady or she will go out and buy more clothes.


http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3688647

First lady makes court appearance in lawsuit against biographer


MEXICO CITY Mexico's first lady appeared today went to court over her civil suit against an Argentine journalist who she claims damaged her reputation.

First Lady Marta Sahagun also alleges the journalist invaded her privacy.

Sahagun, during the hearing in Mexico City, stood near journalist Olga Wornat.

Sahagun has accused Wornat of writing two books about her that cast her in an unfavorable light.

Sahagun is suing for "moral damage."

Wornat drew attention in 2003 by publishing "La Jefa," or "The Boss," a gossipy biography based on unnamed sources that portrayed Sahagun and her three sons negatively.

Wornat's latest book on Sahagun, "Cronicas Malditas," roughly "Accursed Chronicles," appeared this year.

All three sons are from Sahagun's previous marriage.

She and president Vicente Fox were married in 2001, and have no children together.