Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [OT] The Guardian sull'astinenza sessuale di Berlusconi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1698470,00.html
WHEN SILVIO BERLUSCONI SAYS HE WILL NOT HAVE SEX UNTIL THE ELECTION,
WHAT HE MEANS IS: I AM A STATESMAN AND A SEX GOD
Andrew Anthony
At first sight, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's promise to
abstain from sex until after his country's general election on April 9
looks as if it could have been designed as an explanatory illustration
of the phrase "making a virtue out of a necessity".
After all, though he is a multibillionaire, and therefore not
unattractive to certain avaricious tastes, Berlusconi is also a bald
69-year-old married man. For most men of his age, 10 weeks without sex
qualifies as a typical interlude rather than heroic denial.
In fact his wife, the former actress Veronica Lario, wrote an
autobiography a couple of years back in which she complained that she
had "no one with whom to share a concert, or a book, or a walk, or even
a shopping trip".
Now she can add "a bed" to that list of marital projects in which her
husband is either unable or unwilling to participate. Except that Lario
described a marriage of such physical, indeed geographical, detachment
that it is unlikely that, even before the promise, she often had to
wrestle Berlusconi for the duvet.
Yet given that Berlusconi made his pledge at a rally in support of
family values, then with whom else but his wife could he practise his
"complete sexual abstinence"? One answer, of course, is himself. He did
not make it clear whether onanism is included in the remit of his
physical sacrifice, but we do know that the Roman Catholic church has
never been a keen proponent of the sin of self-pollution.
Still, however vain he may be, Berlusconi knows there are no votes to be
won in refusing the pleasure of himself. As a self-described "playboy",
and someone who was not long ago seen in intimate clinches with a
21-year-old assistant, he was surely referring to the superhuman
self-control he will bring to the job of resisting nubile young women
for a whole two and half months. The point is Berlusconi is a man, and
not only that, he is an Italian man, and thus he sees himself as God's
gift to women.
If that wasn't enough, he is also a politician. And as George Galloway
demonstrated in Big Brother, politicians have their own particular
reasons for gift-wrapping themselves as sex gods. Galloway told everyone
in the house that his friends couldn't believe he would be able to go
three weeks without sex. The message he wanted to convey was two-fold
and exactly the same as Berlusconi's.
First he wanted to let the audience know that he is indeed Gorgeous
George, devastatingly attractive to any woman with a heartbeat. Second,
he wished to convey to the watching world that he possessed the
self-discipline to rise above the curse of his seductive looks and
ultra-masculine desire.
It's a canny manoeuvre that speaks to a variety of demographics as well
as both genders. Yes, Galloway and Berlusconi, are saying, we have the
sexual appetite of young men but the restraint of senior statesmen. Men,
women, the youthful, the aged, the apolitical and the religious can find
something of merit in that pitch.
However, though Berlusconi is seeking to identify with men, he is really
aiming at the heart of women. And the question he is asking is this:
Would you like me to be your cat? The risk with that strategy, as
Galloway now knows, is that politicians can soon end up in the doghouse.
(...)
-- 
Jerr 
'All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public
order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health...
what have the Romans ever done for us ?'

 intimate clinches with a 21-year-old assistant
chi?
-- 
Matteo L.  - for mailbox messages sum 36 + 36
Frozen warnings close to mine
Close to the frozen borderline

 chi?
Non lo so, sarà la solita menzogna comunista.
