I Hate What You Just Said

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.

The Italian left Bush Administration pulled no punches during the recent G8 conference on climate change, setting the record straight once and for all on the record of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (born 1936) is one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice. Primarily a businessman with massive holdings and influence in international media, he is regarded by many as a political dilettante who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media.

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Oops!  Picture the scenario.  Intern X is charged with circulating a short biography of G8 leaders for a White House press release.  Like any other red blooded 21st century American scholar, she hops online and nabs the first thing that looks authoritative, cuts and pastes, and voilà, the job is done.

Hated by many but respected by all at least for his bella figura (personal style) and the sheer force of his will, Berlusconi has parlayed his business acumen and influence into a personal empire that has resulted in Italy’s longest–running government ever and in his becoming the country’s wealthiest man. Bursting onto the scene with no political experience in 1993, he campaigned—using his vast network of media holdings—on a promise to purge the notoriously lackadaisical Italian government of corruption. He won appointment to the office of prime minister in 1994. However, he and his fellow Forza Italia Party leaders soon found themselves accused of the very corruption he had vowed to eradicate.

This is an extremely sloppy mistake for an administration that has been so disciplined in distributing its version of reality.  Did someone at the White House forget that Berlusconi and Bush are good personal friends that go way back?  Ah, who can forget the good times they had together after September 11, 2001?  But why, oh why do they always leave the best parts out?

He released a CD in 2003 of Neopolitan love songs. The prime minister prefers to spend his spare time at his 70–room villa in Sardinia named “Arcore,” whose amenities include a private park, a movie theater, and walls of large–screen televisions.

Bush is just jealous I guess.

Call me old fashioned, but it might be a good policy to actually write the things published under the guise of official government communications.  It’s easier to stay on message that way and cuts down on the written apologies, not that it’s necessary to apologize for speaking the truth every now and then.