Family Spat
Brits being funny
“Upper italy” was going to leave this one alone. We have already spoken a number of times about how former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is entirely too newsworthy and how much we resent being forced to think about him.
On the other hand, a reader has more or less accused us of cowardice…
OK, as much of the world already knows, “il Berlusca,” though he is bald and nearly a dwarf, likes to imagine himself as God’s gift to women. This is totally within the Italian tradition. Benito Mussolini as well – also bald, but more stout than short (that too) – suffered from a similar delusion.
At any rate, at a recent award ceremony during which one of Mr. Berlusconi’s television networks gave some prizes to itself, this not very attractive but extremely wealthy magnate drooled a little too publicly on several show-girl type creatures, some of whom have also – oddly, you might think – had unusual success in beginning political careers in the ranks of his personal party, “Forza Italia.”
In the circumstance we will try to avoid using the word “hotbed,” but as political parties go, Forza Italia has proved unusually fertile terrain for exploring the leadership potential of attractive young women with large breasts, long hair and long legs. In particular, the appointment of the Honorable Mara Carfagna, here on the left,
as National Director of the Forza Italia Clubs excited a degree of critical comment from “envious” persons, as Ms. Carfagna then explained.
The phenomenon had already been the object of some snippiness in Italy, but this time – because Mr. B. did his drooling on television – the whole thing was forced to the attention of his wife, Veronica, who was apparently watching from home. The lady, very much cut from “don’t get mad, get even” cloth, took pen in hand and wrote an “open” letter to the main leftist paper, the Rome daily “La Repubblica,” saying more or less that she was getting pretty damned tired of this bullshit and that she now expected a “public act of contrition” from her scumbag husband.
La Repubblica thought it would be fun to run this across the top of its front page, so at least a few people noticed. As a result, Mr. Berlusconi was forced to publicly ask for her pardon, which he did in another open letter of his own. This also attracted a certain amount of attention – from newspapers all over the world, including the “Times” of London.
Because Brits for some reason think they are pretty funny, the Times’ note was accompanied by the satirical letter we reproduce above. This text was meant as a joke, but it is in fact astonishing similar in both tone and content to what Mr. Berlusconi actually wrote.
(By the way, we are picking up the Times clipping on the basis of the “fair use” doctrine in that they have somehow committed “news” and that we are reporting this. It is also merely an “excerpt” from more extensive reporting. We further hope they won’t notice. When and if Mr. Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers ask us to take it down, we will naturally do so immediately…)
We won’t go into the original note, the one being parodied, because there is some risk its eccessive smarminess might leave difficult stains on the hard disk of any computer memorizing it or dealing with it in any way. We don’t even want to think about it.
For the record, La Repubblica – which does not like anything about Silvio Berlusconi – then ran a national survey regarding all this and discovered that 55 percent of the Italian population believes that Mrs. Berlusconi was wrong to protest about her husband’s creepy and very public behavior.
Upper Italy has occasionally tried to point out – (here) for example – that Italy is not necessarily like other places. We are beginning to suspect that Italy is not even like Mars.
(You can lay off now Dean)