June Sarpong MBE brings Politics to the Females!

[Feral]

Girls! Does politics scare you?!? Do you find those frightening concepts like 'manifestos', 'taxation' and 'voting' a total mystery? Be afraid no more!!!

June Sarpong MBE is here to make sense of it all with her fabulous new website!

It's like a news site. Only for girls! It's stylish! It's pink! Most importantly, its got a lipstick in the logo! You can just imagine you're shopping while you're reading it! And Dame June has a blog, so now you need never miss out on her opinons! Its the easy way to make sure you're always up to date with the latest fashionable issues, and must-have policies for the season!

The Times might say that the site has "put back the cause of feminism by approximately 1,000 years" but what do they know about anything!!! Pft.

Three cheers for Dame Sarpong! Is there nothing this woman cannot do!*

(The rumour is that Alexa Chung is now close to launching her new website which will demystify the world of international finance for sassy young hipsters - I, for one, can hardly wait!)

*Actually, before I entirely drown in accumulated sarcasm, the site is really not that bad.

[Deleted]

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! "Coming soon Kylie and Danni Minogue, Shami Chakrabarti, and many more…"

Make it stop.

[coxy1979]

Dame June needs spelling lessons. And needs to learn that educating 'youngsters' about politics goes further than an event you attended and the website launch party at the ICA.

Silly cow.

[jetsetwilly]

Dame June Sarpong, MBE, CBE & BA (Hons.) was on BBC News this morning as an "Anti-Knife Campaigner". She believes that schools should teach kids the difference between right and wrong. This will stop knife crime. She failed to mention that if kids only read her website they would be able to understand that knives are bad, as it's right there in nice pink letters.

I am happy to report that she had nice shiny hair.

[xenomaniac]

I think it's a nice idea.

[lowculture.co.uk]

Oh, don't make me get on my soapbox about June Sarpong again. I think she's great, and don't see why people always feel the need to sneer at her efforts to do a bit of good in the world.

[Mike]

Jul 12, 2008 0:06:45 GMT Feral said:

The Times might say that the site has "put back the cause of feminism by approximately 1,000 years" but what do they know about anything!!! Pft.

I can see why such a website wouldn't appeal to the readership of The Times, but perhaps they would do well to realise that there's a whole world outside that readership.

Like Paul, I'm completely mystified by the hatred for June Sarpong. While most celebrities aren't the least bit interested in raising awareness of anything but themselves and how wonderful they are, June is a breath of fresh air.

[coxy1979]

Jul 13, 2008 21:05:58 GMT lowculture.co.uk said:

Oh, don't make me get on my soapbox about June Sarpong again. I think she's great, and don't see why people always feel the need to sneer at her efforts to do a bit of good in the world.

I liked her as a TV presenter, but her constant attempts to become a serious political journalist/commentator would be more convincing if her blog posts weren't thinly disguised recreations of PR guff full of mistakes and bad grammar.

The girl should at least do an NCTJ.

[Feral]

Jul 13, 2008 21:05:58 GMT lowculture.co.uk said:

Oh, don't make me get on my soapbox about June Sarpong again. I think she's great, and don't see why people always feel the need to sneer at her efforts to do a bit of good in the world.

I don't have any problem with June Sarpong as a person, or (mostly) with her as a TV presenter. It's just that keeps trying to turn herself into some sort of political pundit despite never really actually ever seeming to have much to say other than a few tabloid buzzwords, some empty platitudes and the names of some celebrities she met last night.

Like I said, I don't think the site is that bad – and her heart is probably in the right place with this, unlike most celebs attempting to get involved in some poltical campaign or other. But parts of it still really do smack of the usual patronising 'girls are only interested in politics if its dressed up in pink and they can pretend it's actually celebrity news' type of thing.

It's sort of like when Perez tries to get all political, and ends up saying something pretty much amounting to 'Knives: They BAD' or the equivalent, and you wish he'd just go back to drawing cocks on photos of Chace Crawford.

[jetsetwilly]

My problem with the Sarpong is the same problem I have with all celebrities who dabble in politics; I want a bit of substance there, and I just don't get it with her. She presented T4, which will never be mistaken for Newsnight Review (thank God), but during her tenure I never detected any hidden depths, or hints that when she was discussing Busted's new single she secretly wanted to ask them about their opinions on the European Constitution. Yet somehow, there she is on the BBC News, talking about knife crime, but her basic idea seems to be "it's bad. We should tell people it's bad, then that will stop them." I'd actually have more respect for her if she drew on her celebrity experience to present the facts, but she seems to want to pretend that whole period of her life doesn't exist any more. I feel like she's bought into an ideology without knowing why, but instead doing it because she thinks everyone else is doing it. I'm not suggesting she should be some kind of policy maker for number 10, just that she should earn her place on my Sunday morning news channel. Perhaps I should take up my problems with that bloke with glasses on NewsWatch instead of her (I was also annoyed by Serena McKellen turning up on Andrew Marr, when Bishop Gene thingy was the story, not him; McKellen looked equally uncomfortable, to be fair, and seemed to realise he was only on the show because the booker wanted a Celeb).

I also find calling her Dame June Sarpong very amusing, particularly if her honours get greater and greater.

[David]

Jul 13, 2008 22:40:55 GMT jetsetwilly said:

My problem with the Sarpong is the same problem I have with all celebrities who dabble in politics; I want a bit of substance there, and I just don't get it with her.

I'm not sure we actually get 'substance' from the majority of politicians who appear on TV either. Having watched Iain Duncan Smith admit that he didn't know who 'Heathcliff' was in relation to the character that Gordon Brown compared himself to, the lamentable performance from Andy Burnham on Question Time a few weeks ago, and even the Cheeky Girls getting a lengthy segment on This Week (in fairness, Diane Abbott, having accepted that Labour are fucking things up majorly earlier in the programme, was pissed off enough to ask them their opinions on various political matters), to name a few TV examples recently, June Sarpong's efforts are fairly laudible.

[Rad]

I think the thing with Sarpong is that she seems to have good intentions, and she seems like a really nice person, but there isn't a lot of direction and focus to what she's doing right now.

The website is a good idea (in part; albeit rather stereotypical/patronising) but there's not much there at the moment, and what is there feels a little tacky and insubstantial (e.g. the scrolling bar; the comment from some woman's dog).

If she had one or two good people to help advise her and work with her so her project(s) had a clearer focus and actually said more, I think she would be taken more seriously and also be able to affect more change.