Friday, February 02, 2007

But Silvio, do you really love me?

Apparently, some 180 news web sites around the world the other day ran the news that Veronica Lario, who also goes by the last name of Berlusconi, wrote an open letter to the “La Repubblica” national newspaper (front page too!) demanding an apology from her husband and former (twice) Italian prime minister Silvio. The reason? Well, because the old and spryly 70 year-old businessman (Italy’s richest by the way) turn-politician was a wee bit too chummy with some luscious and beautiful Italian showgirls at an awards ceremony. It seems that our former “Fearless Leader” (the North Koreans have their “Dear Leader”, we’ve got instead Berlusconi!) turned to one of the voluptuous ladies and said, “If I weren’t already married, I would marry you right now”! while to another one he said, “With you I’d go anywhere”!

“Basta”!, said Veronica (she’s been with Silvio for 27 years now and has given him three kids, his second marriage too), and so she proceeded to send the newspaper a letter demanding his apology. The letter was printed on the first page. Silvio though isn’t new to these amorous advances. At one political debate he commented on the beautiful legs of the women seated in the front row. To a fellow female “Forza Italia” candidate (the name of his political party) he yelled, “Let’em have it”!, in clear reference to her reproductive organ (luckily for Silvio the candidate didn’t hear his umpteenth gaffe!). During an international meeting, he said to the Finnish prime minister instead, a woman, that he was going to pull from his sleeve all his tricks from his days as a playboy (he was trying to woo her into letting Italy, instead of Finland, have an important international institute on food located in Parma). First of all, this went down VERY badly with the Finns who are probably as politically correct as the average North American and second, have you ever seen the Finnish prime minister? Let us just say that Hulk Hogan is cuter!

On another occasion during a trip to the U.S., he faced American businessmen/women and in order to increase American investments in Italy (they’re rather low because of all the red-tape bureaucracy in Italy), he justified things by also saying that “we have not only beautiful businesswomen in Italy but also secretaries”! No doubt for a country who has so far given the world Madeleine Albright (she was once defined as a “serpent” by the Iranian ambassador to the UN. The following day she came to the UN wearing a brooch in the form of a snake. Not only, but when Castro’s air force shot down a plane carrying dissident leaflets, she accused the Cubans of not having “cojones”, balls!), Jean Kirkpatrick (the former U.S. ambassador to the UN), Meg Whitman, the CEO of Ebay (and considered to be currently the most powerful woman in the world of international business. That title was once held by the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina), Condi Rice and perhaps one day even Hillary Clinton over at the White House, well, this didn’t go down too well with many people present that day, especially NOT in the land of politically correctness “par excellence”.

Berlusconi, as “gallant” as ever, decided to apologise to Veronica through the same means. That news “only” covered a whopping six pages in the Italian dailies yesterday! Italian analysts stated that the whole world had gone “crazy” with the news of Veronica’s letter to her husband (apparently, he wasn’t informed about what she was going to do and was somewhat p.offed too!). Few though have been able to read properly between the lines: it’s another example of just how “seriously” the rest of the world, in particular the U.S., takes Italy. Another example? In 2003 I was in the south of Portugal for an important women’s soccer event. On the nearby Azores islands Portugal’s then prime minister Barroso was about to meet with Bush, Blair and Spain’s Aznar to discuss the imminent attack against Iraq. I was watching the entire event live on BBC. Not once, and I mean not once, did the Brits ever mention the word “Italy” or “Berlusconi”. In fact, he wasn’t even invited to the meeting even though Italy was part of the coalition force that went into Iraq.

To paraphrase the great Rodney Dangerfield and Italy’s great “admiration” by the rest of the world, “I don’t get any respect”!

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