The Honorable Member
The Hon. Wladimiro Guadagno, in art “Vladimir Luxuria”
This is a sideshow moment in Italian politics. The government is deeply in trouble over a flawed budget bill. The Center-Right opposition is delighted since the legislation will cost the side promoting it reams of votes, but for that to happen the bill must pass. The Left too must pass the bill or collapse – something no-one is in a hurry to see (here).
Still, if anybody thinks over much about all this, or if too much attention is focussed on exactly who is doing what, the happy ending might be in jeopardy. The upshot is that just about everyone, of any political stripe, would for the moment prefer to talk about nearly anything else.
There is a promising little scandal underway about lesser bureaucrats snooping from their desktop computers in tax records to find out what famous people earn. Since one of the victims is the present Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, the Left is now calling for a reform of the intelligence services, though these at least appear to have nothing to do with the question. Since by far the most spied upon are famous soccer players and ladies who pose for calendars without all of their clothing, it is hard to suspect a serious plot. Mere white-collar boredom appears a better explanation.
But that is cheap-jack stuff. Our favorite story, currently above the fold here, has to do with the highly moral battle between a Center-Right parliamentarian, Ms. Elisabetta Gardini, and a Center-Left member, Mr. Vladimir Luxuria.
Ms. Gardini once had the honor of briefly serving as the official spokesman of Silvio Berlusconi’s “Forza Italia” party – until she was overheard by a journalist telling an amusing little story about a special device recently (then) purchased by Mr. Berlusconi’s Minister of the Economy to insert suppositories in the part of his body suppositories are supposed to go in. She is still – if in name only – the party spokesman, but for the most part is not actually allowed to speak to journalists about matters of importance.
After the suppository episode Ms. Gardini rapidly acquired a delicate sensitivity comparable to that of the fabled princess who could not sleep because of a pea under her mattress. She has now been horribly offended – “I felt raped, I nearly fainted…” – by an attempt by Mr. Luxuria to use the same parliamentary ladies’ restroom as she.
As a result, la Gardini has returned to the public eye, giving interviews to important newspapers underlining her view that if Luxuria wants to use facilities reserved to female members of Parliament, he must first have his “thing” cut off. Mr. Luxuria has been rather more reserved, but to judge from newspaper photos, appears to have renewed his wardrobe with some quite dramatic evening gowns.
Mr. Luxuria, in other words, is not a very manly man. He is in fact best-known as Italy’s most visible “transgender” Member of Parliament. He is a drag queen, elected in the lists of the “Refounded Communist Party” as part of a desperate attempt to demonstrate that it can still be trendy to be a Stalinist.
At any rate, using the ladies’ toilet is an important part of his self-image and Luxuria has now proclaimed that Ms. Gardini’s attack on his right to pee wherever nature – rather than mere physiology – tells him amounts to a form of “sexual violence.” Both believe, if for somewhat different reasons, that the episode casts a negative light on the prestige of the Italian Parliament.
Both, of course, are right about that, but then the budget bill is not a great deal prettier as these things go…