Word: borer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Flamboyant and Swiss are adjectives not often found in close proximity to each other, particularly when the individual being described is a career diplomat. Thomas Borer, who is both these things and was until April his country's ambassador to Germany, thinks this is a problem. "If you're a diplomat of a small country like Switzerland, you have to work on bringing a new image across, on raising the country's profile," he says. "You can only do this through your own personality. You have to make people have an interest...
During his three-year stint as Swiss envoy to Berlin, Borer, 45, did just that. He and his wife Shawne Fielding, 34, a former Texas beauty queen, became fixtures on the German capital's party circuit and in the popular press. Establishment figures back home may have been perturbed by Fielding's appearance in a German magazine photo spread, but Borer makes no apology for the shots of his glamorous blonde wife in a strapless gown astride a horse and toting toy guns in a red miniskirt - a dollar sign above her cleavage - on the roof the newly refurbished embassy...
...Borer's groundbreaking approach to statecraft was not an unqualified success - he was recalled to Bern when a Swiss paper published details of an alleged affair with a topless model. Though he denied the story from the beginning and has since received a sizable out-of-court settlement from the tabloid, which admitted fabricating the story, he quit government and remains bitter over his treatment. "I will never go back under this minister," he says when asked if he would ever return to the diplomatic corps. "But fortunately ministers change...
...press frenzy over his alleged indiscretions marked the second time in his career that Borer became the most high-profile of Switzerland's diplomats. For nearly three years he headed the task force that handled claims arising from Swiss banks' dealings with Nazi Germany during World War II. He prides himself on his "tough but fair" negotiating stance that won him the support of his countrymen for "standing up for Switzerland" as well as the commendation of several Jewish organizations...
Debuting as the hottest handheld electronic device since Tamaguchi, Gay Raydar, a hand held buzzer that alerts its wearer when another Gay Radar wearer is close by, is all the rage in California. Entrepreneur Michael Borer has tagged the item a must have in an effort to take anonymous venues for meeting other gays out of the chat rooms and onto the street. Gay men, and even lesbians, concedes Borer, will be able to carry a personalized detector of other gay people also carrying the device within fifty feet...