The Italian job

A month ago we talked here about corruption in Israel. But if there is an expert country on this, that’s Italy. And Silvio Berlusconi is his biggest product.

I always wondered why Italians keep voting him. In the end, many of the nationals from that country I met in the past hate him or think he is an idiot. Il Cavalieri, as he likes to be called, made his media-sportive-political emporium first, shielded it with laws and now lives on the rents from that. As leader of a long tradition corrupt political class and with an opposition without ideas or unity, Berlusconi’s empire looks pretty stable.

During the time he has spend in politics, he have angered Muslims saying they were an inferior race compared to Western countries; Germans for comparing a European politician from that country with the Nazis; Mussolini’s victims for saying he was a “benign dictator” who didn’t kill anyone, but send the opposition “on holidays”; Finnish for flirting as a “playboy” with their Premier to get a summit celebrated in Italy; feminists in several occasions, like when he said the reason to invest in Italy was “the pretty secretaries”; Chinese for saying that Communists “eat children” or “boil them” to use them as “fertilizers”... And the list goes on.

Not even a worldwide loved Obama was free from his jokes, as he argued that the American President is
even “tanned".

But probably, this year has been his most prolific in gaffes. In January, Berlusconi argued that it would be impossible to stop rapists in Italy, even deploying all the soldiers in the Army, because Italian women were too pretty.

If that scandalized the people, the royalty got the same medicine too on the G20 summit. There, Queen Elizabeth II was surprised to discover il Cavalieri shouting in his salon to call Obama with a voice that could be heard from the outside. Next day, he made all the Premiers and Presidents present for the NATO summit to wait for the photo group, as he was busy talking on the phone.

Last month, after the earthquake that shattered L’Aquila and ended with almost 300 deaths and thousands of homes destroyed, Berlusconi said to the ones who had lost everything to take it as a “camping weekend”. Not happy with that, a few days later he recommended them to buy the new furniture in IKEA.

Last chapter was the divorce demand presented by his wife, Veronica. The reason argued by the Italian first dame, 20 years younger than Berlusconi, is that the Premier went to a 18th birthday party of a girl in Naples and gave her a gold necklace. Kind of strange, as Berlusconi’s wife says he never attended any of his own children 18th birthday party.

That only boosted Veronica’s suspicions for Berlusconi’s preference for young women, as it did the pick up of young pretty women for his electoral lists, even many of them lack of some or even any political experience.

Il Cavalieri’s defense has been a few photos from the party, to show that it was all very “innocent”. Too bad that the photos look like being modified. But hey, now that they started playing with Photoshop they should have stopped there; they should have had real fun, as shown in this photo galery from the same party.

And after all this, will Italians continue voting him? Really?



Photo: Reuters