Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Una teenager può far cadere Re Sola? [The Independent]

� possibile che una teenager faccia cadere Berlusconi?, si chiede The
Indeopendent, e dedica a Re S�la un lunghisismo articolo (riportato
nella sua versione integarle pi� sotto). �� sintomatico della
banalizzazione della politica italiana sotto Berlusconi che egli sia
ora chiamato a rispondere non per mafia, non per corruzione, ma a
causa del rapporto con una teenager. Ma lo scontro in s� non � banale.
Vivere in Italia ora � come essere intrappolati in un fiume di lava
che scende lentamente ma irreversibilmente sul fianco di una montagna.
Anzich� portare a una rivitalizzata Seconda Repubblica, gli scandali
di corruzione degli anni '90 hanno portato a una Et� di Silvio e a un
lento, costante degrado delle istituzioni democratiche del Paese. Se
il primo ministro pu� farla franca portando avanti una storia d'amore
adulterina e semipubblica con una adolescente (e poi mentire cos�
spudoratamente che ogni sciocco pu� vedere che non sta dicendo la
verit�), e non venir chiamato a risponderne, allora la nazione � in
pericolo�. 
- - - -
COULD A TEENAGE GIRL TOPPLE BERLUSCONI?
She calls him 'daddy'. He bought her a �6,000 necklace for her 18th.
Silvio Berlusconi's relationship with Noemi Letizia has already seen
his wife file for divorce. Now, could it cost him his grip on power?
[by Peter Popham, The Independent, Wednesday, 27 May 2009]
Italians are always scornful about the obsession of the "Anglo-Saxon"
media with the private lives of the rich and famous, but for the past
month the Italian newspapers have been preoccupied with one subject
and one subject only: the relationship between Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi and a young woman from Naples called Noemi Letizia.
Mr Berlusconi has been caught out telling numerous lies about the
relationship and refuses to explain them. And with important elections
pending, his popularity, at an all-time high only six weeks ago, may
be eroding.
The media cannot be accused of muck-raking on the issue because it was
Mr Berlusconi himself who drew attention to the relationship in
Tuesday when he took advantage of a trip to Naples to drop in on
Noemi's 18th birthday party. There he posed for photographs and
presented the pretty young blonde with a gold and diamond pendant
worth �6,500 (�5,700). This unremarkable event was immortalised in a
short news story the next day in La Repubblica.
And there it would have ended, except that within four days it
provided Mr Berlusconi's second wife, Veronica, with the casus belli
for a divorce. Her husband, she said in a press release, was
"consorting with minors"; he was "not well", she was worried about
him, but in the meantime, after nearly 30 years together, she was in
no doubt that the marriage was over.
Suddenly that innocuous-seeming social event assumed mysterious and
sinister overtones. Noemi, it was learned, called Mr Berlusconi
"papi", Italian for "daddy". He seemed on remarkably familiar terms
with the girl. Pushed into a corner by Veronica, who opens her mouth
about once every two years but with devastating effect, Berlusconi
went on Porta-a-Porta, a late-night political chat show hosted by his
most unctuous TV courtier and explained that Noemi's father Elio
Letizia was an old political contact from his days when he was
connected to Bettino Craxi and the Socialist party: Berlusconi needed
to see him on urgent European election business. But soon afterwards
Bobo Craxi, son of the late Bettino, popped up and said he had never
heard of Noemi's father. Likewise Mr Berlusconi's unlikely claim about
"election business" failed to pan out, and some weeks later was denied
by Letizia himself.
The personal was personal no more: something about that birthday
party, and Mr Berlusconi's presence at it, had tipped the
long-suffering Veronica over the edge. One reason for her anger, as
she explained in a bitter email to the Ansa news agency, was the fact
that he had failed to turn up to the coming-of-age parties of any of
the their own children, "even though he was invited". But that in
itself could not be la goccia che ha fatto traboccare il vaso, (or as
we would say, the straw that broke the camel's back). Could Berlusconi
be the lover of Noemi, and thus perhaps guilty as Veronica suggested
of "consorting with minors"? Or might she be his love child? Her plump
cheeks and currant eyes, not that dissimilar to the Prime Minister's,
allowed the world to guess at the latter possibility. But Mr
Berlusconi flatly refused to shed any light on their relationship. He
insisted that he had only met her "three or four times", and always in
the company of her parents.
The irony is that never before has Berlusconi showed any coyness about
exposing his colourful and chaotic private life to the public gaze. He
fell in love with Veronica when she appeared topless in a play called
The Magnificent Cuckold in Milan, and lived in sin with her for 10
years before marrying her in a civil ceremony; their children were
born before the wedding. When he went into politics in 1994 his
manifesto was a bowdlerised autobiography, Una Storia Italiana,
depicting himself as the Italian everyman, the bank manager's son from
nowhere who had grown immensely rich through hard work, a home-loving
family man in touch with his common roots. Italians in their millions
swallowed it, yet no-one doubted (you just had to look at his two
wives) that he had an eye for the girls.
It was after his second and much more convincing election victory in
2001 that the rumours about Berlusconi's frenetic affairs began to
circulate in earnest, with talk of a beautiful young intern being
taken to his Sardinian villa for the summer as his "assistant" � and
the rapid promotion of others who were similarly eye-catching through
the ranks of his party, Forza Italia, by way of his commercial
television channels. Berlusconi the ageing rou� had found the perfect
way to keep his libido engaged, despite the demands of politics. And
this being Italy, nobody made a fuss. Veronica had been settled in a
magnificent house a few kilometres from Berlusconi's main home, Villa
Arcore, north of Milan. He was obviously a bad husband, but in Italy
that was nobody's business but the family's.
Yet as the editor of La Repubblica, Ezio Mauro, pointed out yesterday:
"Mr Berlusconi long ago destroyed the boundaries between the public
and the private." He did it when he published his manifesto. And he
continued to do it in a more chaotic, impulsive way when he allowed
the paparazzi to snap him hanging out with busty showgirls 50 years
his junior. It was the behaviour of a sultan, a monarch or a dictator,
and the way Berlusconi was pushing the envelope was an indication of
how he was steadily moving in that direction. His own newspapers and
television channels would never cry foul. RAI, the national
broadcaster, was increasingly under his thumb. Even the independent
dailies were more and more reliant on his goodwill. Berlusconi's
growing recklessness about his image became a barometer of his
increasing sense of personal invulnerability.
But he was reckoning without Veronica. It was in January 2007 that she
first told the world that he had gone too far, granting an interview
to La Repubblica (one of the few really independent dailies), in which
she demanded that he apologise for saying of Mara Carfagna, a glamour
model turned MP (and now a cabinet minister), "I would marry her like
a shot if I wasn't married already." Meekly Berlusconi consented. But
he didn't reform. He carried on just as before, until Noemi's 18th
birthday rolled around and it all went horribly wrong.
Today Italy is at an impasse: La Repubblica has insistently demanded
that Berlusconi come clean about Noemi, for the last two weeks
publishing a list of 10 questions it wants him to answer. Berlusconi
has repeatedly refused. With European elections just 10 days away,
there is a real risk that his silence will injure him in polls he was
expected to win with ease � particularly now that respected figures in
the Catholic church like the former Archbishop of Pisa Alessandor
Plotti have begun to attack him. Berlusconi has said he may make a
statement to parliament in response to what he calls the "vile
reports" about his relationship with Noemi.
It is symptomatic of the trivialisation of Italian politics under
Berlusconi that he is now being held to account, not for corruption,
or mafia connections, but because of his relationship with a teenage
girl. But the fight itself is not trivial. Living in Italy now is like
being trapped in a field of lava slowly but irreversibly sliding down
a mountainside. Far from leading to a revitalised "Second Republic",
Italy's bribery scandals of the 1990s instead ushered in the Age of
Silvio and the slow, steady degradation of the nation's democratic
institutions. If the Prime Minister can get away with carrying on an
adulterous, semi-public love affair with a teenage girl (and then
lying so brazenly about it that any fool can see he is not telling the
truth) and still he is not brought to account � then the nation is in
danger.
- - - -

� possibile che una teenager faccia cadere Berlusconi?, si chiede The
Indeopendent, e dedica a Re S�la un lunghisismo articolo (riportato
nella sua versione integarle pi� sotto).
Azzeccatissima la definizione del Vespasiano di Potta a Potta: "Spinto
in un angolo da Veronica, che apre bocca ogni due anni circa, ma con
effetti devastanti, Berlusconi � andato a Porta a Porta, uno chat-show
politico della tarda serata condotto dal suo pi� untuoso cortigiano
televisivo".
Inoltre "� sintomatico della banalizzazione della politica italiana
sotto Berlusconi che egli sia ora chiamato a rispondere non per mafia,
non per corruzione, ma a causa del rapporto con una teenager. Ma lo
scontro in s� non � banale. Vivere in Italia ora � come essere
intrappolati in un fiume di lava che scende lentamente ma
irreversibilmente sul fianco di una montagna. Anzich� portare a una
rivitalizzata Seconda Repubblica, gli scandali di corruzione degli
anni '90 hanno portato a una Et� di Silvio e a un lento, costante
degrado delle istituzioni democratiche del Paese. Se il primo ministro
pu� farla franca portando avanti una storia d'amore adulterina e
semipubblica con una adolescente (e poi mentire cos� spudoratamente
che ogni sciocco pu� vedere che non sta dicendo la verit�), e non
venir chiamato a risponderne, allora la nazione � in pericolo." 


 nella sua versione integarle pi� sotto).
ti ringrazierei se l'articolo non fosse inutile e noioso....

ti ringrazierei se l'articolo non fosse inutile e noioso....
Giudicheranno i lettori stranieri cui � rivolto se � inutile e noioso.
Qui l'ho pubblicato solo perch� � un bel ritratto di come siamo visti
all'estero.
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