Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Roman candles

Election results in Italy stimulate a long dark night of the soul for some local journalists, with commentary remarkable even for a culture so renowned for arm-waving operatics…

“An Italy split down the middle, cleaved into two indomitable and irreconcilable halves, politically, culturally and socially... The trap has sprung. And it's like the poisoned sting of a scorpion on the live flesh of a country that from today will perhaps be unable to have a new government... A perfect metaphor for this Italy...” - Massimo Giannini, La Repubblica


“Like the poisoned sting of a scorpion”? Well, I mean to say, steady on Massimo, there’s a good chap. It’s only Italy, after all. Life goes on…


An Italian yesterday. Famed for their equanimity, so they are.

10 comments:

Pat said...

You can't help feeling a bit sorry for Berlusconi, after all he went through to get real hair - and for what?

Anonymous said...

Is he gone then the fucker? Good. I don't watch the news you see, I rely mainly on the likes of Ivan and Hutton to keep me informed. So I usually know fuck-all. I do hope we can have exciting old-school italian government now. The kind that disappears every two weeks. Much more fun.

Desargues said...

The very fact that Gannini hopes his preporsterously bombastic rhetoric will reach a large audience shows Italians are more united than ever. United in a penchant for using absurdly overblown language for saying something as simple as, "The vote was very tight." But then they're not Anglo-Saxons. Gotta be the inheritance of Roman oratory and what not. Now, there's another people in the area who likes to revel in the same sort of linguistic debauchery; they're also fond of frog legs, I think.

But if Berlusconi has to pack up and leave, gone forever will be the fun of reading about EU summits. That man brought life to an essentially lethargic activity--politics in mass democracies, and that's no small feat. Who else is gonna call German MEPs a Nazi kapo? Huh? Plus, Romano Prodi has about as much charisma as a plastic bucket. And he's a leftie in a country with $1.8 trillion in foreign debt. They need a left-winger in Italy like Michael Jackson needs yet another nose-job.

Pat said...

Missed yesterday's post but the Cold Play man wrote a song for his spouse Gwyneth, entitled Moses - hence the choice.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Well, Pi, I reckon "Mr B" (copyright Mr Tessa Jowell) woulda gone for the hair anyway. I mean, whoever heard of a bald rat?

And if that song was for Gwyneth, why on Earth was it about Moses? I sense a "parting her Red Sea" joke lurking in the undergrowth somewhere nearby, and I'm not going out there.

Yes, Des, Prodi's a bit of a leftie, and so of course a traitor to humanity by definition. But on the other hand, he really believes in European Federalism and the EU Constitution, and wants to distance Italy from the US. So none of that nonsense about him being yesterday's man, OK? Dynamic is the word. But to Rob's point, he won't have long enough to screw up the economy anyway. Not that it isn't already screwed...

Anonymous said...

I don't keep up on Italian politics, primarily because it seems to be nothing but loud talking and wild gestures, but isn't Berlusconi the one who swore off sex during the campaign, for God only knows what reason?

Cheers.

Desargues said...

At some point he compared himself to Jesus Christ, for he saw himself as the innocent lamb slaughtered mercilessly by the Pharisees and Sadukees of Italian left-wing parties (a not insignificant share of whom are Communists). I guess he must have remembered Jesus was celibate, so he followed suit. That's the charitable interpretation. A more realistic explanation is, he may have tried to convert his libido into kinetic energy. With all the gesticulating and frantic blathering required to engage in Italian politics, God knows you need a lot of energy to step up your game.

Ivan the Terrible said...

Also, everyone knows his wife is far from faithful, and relations between Mr and Mrs B are strained at the best of times.

Cynical types try to tell me that Mr B has other sources of carnal pleasure available to him, but I will not listen to such scurrilous fabrications...

The Aunt said...

I sang with Mr Prodi once. (For the record, it was MY hymnsheet we were sharing). He can't sing, bless him. Which probably explains why he never worked as a cruise ship crooner.

Also he's even shorter than I am and has dandruff, but he's affable and honest and I like him.

You're right about the foreign debt, though, Desargues. Give him a chance. He may surprise us.

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