Porn Politics
Oh, I’m just getting warmed up Berlusconi today. His latest scandal centers around a series of recorded telephone conversations that show just how hard he’s willing to work to secure policy positions for topless models. This man’s sacrifice is truly mind boggling; why he’s the Jesus Christ of Politics! In response to the incriminating transcripts, Berlusconi did what any self-respecting unreconstructed fascist would do: try to make government accountability illegal. So in America, wiretapping expands while in Italy, it becomes more limited. Excuse me for a moment while I laugh and cry at the same time.
Problem is, the cat is already out the bag on this one, and it is a non-stop quote machine.
First, there’s the case of Mara Carfagna, the current minister for Equal Opportunity. This headline pretty much sums up her situation: Carfagna denies pleasuring Berlusconi. Even better is this long piece from the Guardian:
For more than a week now, Rome has been alive with rumours that police in Naples, working on yet another investigation of Berlusconi for alleged corruption, taped sexually explicit discussions between the prime minister and his 32-year-old equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, a former topless model. The tapes were reportedly made while investigators were probing the relationship between Berlusconi and the head of drama at RAI, Italy’s equivalent of the BBC.
Moving on, it’s the case of the journalist Virginia Sanjust di Teulada, that has the most, ahem, legs. What happened here?
As for Sanjust di Teulada, the intelligence officer’s wife, her role remains mysterious. According to Armati’s version, set out in documents submitted to the Rome court and summarised this week in the daily La Repubblica, the flowers his wife received were the prelude to a lunch the next day at the prime minister’s office and a gift of a diamond bracelet. The intelligence officer claims it was the start of a intense romance from which he initially benefited…
Contacted by a journalist from Corriere della Sera, she replied with a refined ambiguity worthy of a character in a Pirandello drama. “The truth,” mused Virginia Sanjust di Teulada, “is always - but in this case particularly - impossible to explain in words.”
Courts in Naples and in Rome are currently sifting through over 250 hours of transcripts. Stay tuned.
