fpb

The worst thing is that these morons force me to defend Berlusconi

May 20, 2010 14:10

I don't like Berlusconi. I feel about him roughly as the last uncrowned king of Italy - the late Gianni Agnelli - who, on two memorable occasions, informed the then President of the Republic about him. First, when in 1993 the then TV, football and real estate mogul was rumoured to be about to enter politics, the President made an appointment with the head of Fiat, who could be expected to know him and to be able to assess his intentions and character, and who was too big a man to fear to express himself. Agnelli answered in two memorable words: "Un bugiardo!" - "a liar!", while spreading his arms out as if in despair. Later, after the first Berlusconi government had collapsed, the President suggested that Agnelli should head a non-party government of specialists, to avoid early elections. The old aristocrat refused, saying "We have had quite enough amateurs." Nobody in the room had any doubt who he meant.

Well, Gianni Agnelli is dead now, and Fiat is preparing for a future without Agnellis and quite possibly without Italy, repositioning itself as a world automotive and engineering giant. And while Berlusconi has grown, in many ways Agnelli's assessment is still valid. The man is a liar; or rather, a man incapable of telling the truth. He is not wholly deluded: in everything that concerns him, his career and his business, he is shrewd, far-sighted and highly efficient. But he has no standard of greater truth-telling; he is either spewing forth like a boastful child, or telling lies a child could see through. He has no dignity and no self-conrol; and though unable to be a tyrant - a Berlusconi-ran tyranny would not last a year - he is an everlasting sore loser, whiner and blusterer. So, yes, a liar, and more than a liar. Agnelli, whose private life would never have borne scrutiny, always knew how to behave in public; Berlusconi has replaced him as the richest man in the country, but could never occupy his place of uncrowned monarch, nor gain the respect of his fellow citizens. It is as though the king had been replaced by the court jester.

Even that element of amateurism, in spite of fifteen years of practice and a naturally receptive mind, has not quite gone away. It is especially visible in foreign policy, where a Rodney Kingish inclination to want everyone to just get along - with himself as the grinning master of ceremonies - has led him to be exploited by the likes of Putin, and an inability to think clearly has diluted the naturally pro-Israeli message of Italian public opinion (Berlusconi has even proposed that Israel should be invited to enter the EU) by looking for deals and good fellowship with the likes of Gheddafi (who paid him back by delivering an atrocious diplomatic insult to Italy).

But the crap that is constantly spewed forth by Berlusconi's enemies forces me, very much against my inclination, to defend him. He is simply not what they make him out to be. He is not a tyrant. He is no threat to democracy. His electoral victories have been fair, and he has proved the least incompetent of a truly terrible bunch. The Prodi government, in which I personally had placed some hopes, has been an unmitigated disaster, and the electors knew it when they voted the opposition into power. And all the idiots who repeat the fable that he controls the media simply show that they have never read a word of Italian in their lives and cannot tell truth from fiction. Most of the Italian press, both daily and weekly, is implacably at war with him: La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Avvenire, Espresso, Famiglia Cristiana, all oppose him and his party; and even the TV canals, in spite of being nominally under his control, are all colonized by Berlusconi opponents to the extent that the late Oriana Fallaci (who had been a journalist all her life and knew a thing or two about it) found disgraceful on their part and incomprehensible on his.

Now we have hit another bottom - not that it will be the last. Comedian (so to speak!) Sabina Guzzanti has made a movie called DRAQUILA, in which it is implied that the victims of last year's earthquake at L'Aquila have been herded into prison camps guarded by armed sentries, and left there to rot.

To say just how much belief is to be given to this piece of pathological mendacity, you only need to repeat to yourselves the following few words. It has been made in Italy. It has been made by an Italian citizen, with Italian money. It has been taken to an international movie festival (and not just any one, either, but Cannes) to represent Italy. And every single person involved in it, beginning with the director, is living happily and quite free of any threat in Italy.

The truth is that, as I forecast last year, that most of the earthquake victims have been rehoused, and the district returned a Berlusconi majority at the most recent elections. A few local politicians who tried to make a fuss against the Government - which is routine in this kind of great disasters, not only in Italy - have lost out. This can be verified by anyone who bothers to go visit. Besides, I know the people of L'Aquila well enough. I served in the Army there, under a local NCO and officers. The very notion that they would let themselves be herded into camps like sheep is lunacy. They are mountain people, descendants of ancient bandits and bear hunters - and there are still bears in those mountains - tough, obstinate, and opinionated. Nobody who ever came here with hostile intentions ever came back unmauled: they fought Napoleon from 1798 until 1811, they fought Garibaldi and the King of Italy long after their leaders had given up, and they were among the first to form partisan bands and treat the unwelcome Nazi guests of 1943 as they deserved. Sabrina Guzzanti, who is from Rome, may have heard that Abruzzo is sheep country, but it so, she badly misunderstood the expression. To cast bear hunters as sheep shows a singular ineptitude in casting - which is supposed to be a moviemaker's skill.

Of course, the Brutish Broadcrawling Burporation reported on this absurdity at length and as if it were about something real.

italian politics, insanity, italy, berlusconi, sabina guzzanti

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