Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Furio Colombo: L’Italia s’è persa

L’Italia s’è persa  -    di Furio Colombo
     Non so che cosa vede guardando l’Italia dall’alto del Quirinale.
Non so come arriva lassù il grido di Berlusconi “I giudici ci spingono
sull’orlo della guerra civile”. Quella che segue è una libera
interpretazione. Il presidente della Repubblica pronuncia un discorso
sull’Italia, il suo Risorgimento, la sua unità, la sua Costituzione,
il suo ruolo nella storia contemporanea, la sua fiducia nel futuro,
preparato da coloro che hanno dato passione e vita per fare e poi per
liberare il paese. Il presidente della Repubblica si volta e l’Italia
non c’è. I notabili si tengono lontani dai progetti di celebrazione
dell’unità d’Italia. C'è poco tempo per essere pronti, ma non ci sta
pensando nessuno. I cittadini sono distratti. O sono sui tetti a
reclamare il lavoro. Oppure sono pronti a   votare di nuovo come hanno
già votato perché nessuno finora gli ha raccontato con forza e
chiarezza la vera storia.
   L’Italia non c’è, tanto che il tricolore viene sventolato allo
stadio di Bordeaux per gridare (lo gridano tifosi di passaporto
italiano): “Se saltelli muore Balotelli”. Si riferiscono al cittadino
italiano e nero Mario Balotelli. Smettono quando i dirigenti della
nobile squadra Juventus fanno notare che potrebbero esserci
conseguenze sul punteggio della squadra. Quanto all’Italia, non parla
nessuno. Un mare di decisioni razziste di sindaci e di governo nega
che sia mai esistito un paese rispettabile con quel nome. E la Storia
di questo paese (proprio la Storia, con l’iniziale maiuscola, quella
di Mazzini, Gioberti, Garibaldi, quella della Repubblica Romana, del
Risorgimento,   della Resistenza) finisce lì. Adesso è un paese che
intrattiene saldi e proficui rapporti (forse non proficui per tutti,
certo per alcuni) solo con la Russia di Putin e la Libia di Gheddafi.
È un paese che non ha peso, prestigio o immagine in Europa. Tanto che
viene spinto indietro nella corsa alle nomine del governo europeo
senza perdere tempo in spiegazioni. Un paese così estraneo ai nuovi
equilibri del mondo che si precipita, non richiesto, a offrire soldati
– come in un rito medievale – per farsi notare e sperare di incassare
almeno un generico elogio. Il presidente della Repubblica si volta e
non trova l’Italia.
   La racconta lo storico Lucio Villari nel libro “Bella e perduta,
l’Italia del Risorgimento” (Laterza, 2009). Racconta delle persone,
degli anni, degli eventi che hanno costruito dal niente e collocato
con forza in Europa un paese che prima non c’era. Ma è bene non
equivocare. L’autore non sta ripetendo il rito che ormai è diventato
costume: gli intellettuali   tacciono, scrivono, depositano in
silenzio un nuovo libro e tornano a uscire discretamente di scena
perché sanno o sentono che nell’Italia di questi anni non hanno – e
preferiscono non avere – alcun ruolo. Lucio Villari, con il suo testo,
stila l’atto di morte dell’Italia che narra, fatta di eroi nobili ed
eroi popolani, di soldati e volontari, di poeti e contadini, di
maestri e scolari, di celebri e ignoti, di nomi di strade e di memorie
comuni. Ogni capitolo certifica che non c’è più niente di ciò che fino
a poco tempo   fa molti di noi hanno studiato a scuola, la parte bella
e fondante di un nuovo Stato-nazione in Europa. Il presidente della
Repubblica si volta e trova di fronte a sé un paesaggio da Piranesi,
reso più squallido dal protagonismo perverso di chi adesso fa la voce
grossa. Il nord è dominato da bande secessioniste che guadagnano sugli
immigrati e poi li perseguitano. Lo fanno con leggi che riescono ad
ottenere governando da una capitale che chiamano “Roma ladrona”. Il
sud è corroso da una feroce criminalità organizzata, che ha i suoi
emissari nei governi   locali ma anche – come ci informa la
magistratura – nel governo di Roma. Il nord viola apertamente la
Costituzione, frantumando non solo lo Stato-nazione Italia, ma anche
le regioni, secondo i dialetti e le ordinanze crudeli e distruttive
dei sindaci-padroni contro gli zingari, contro gli immigrati, contro
gli italiani che si ostinano a parlare italiano. Il sud sta pensando a
un suo governo che vuol dire protezioni, privilegi, banche e rifiuto
delle leggi. Il governo di Roma è un centro di affari personali a cui
piega tutta l’attività del Parlamento e ciò che resta della vita
internazionale italiana.   Il presidente della Repubblica si volta e
non vede in molte aule comunali e in molti luoghi pubblici il suo
ritratto che, fino a poco fa, era simbolo dell’unità del paese. Resta
una croce che però non è simbolo di fraternità ma di divisione e
persecuzione.
   Leggete il libro “Italia bella e perduta” di Villari come si legge
il testamento di ciò   che è stata l’Italia. Provoca un’immensa
nostalgia, ma non la fa rinascere. Una politica di opposizione,
accanita e carica di passione, come il Risorgimento, come la
Resistenza, potrebbe. Ma non ce n’è alcuna traccia.

     
Vecchio pazzo maniaco fatti curare il cervello marcio.
Questa � la reputazione del tuo sodale compagno Colombo.
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
� 1993 The New York Observer Company Inc.
________________________________________
JULY 19-JULY 26, 1993
________________________________________
A Columbia Professor by His Own Fiat,
Agnelli's Man in N .Y.  Wears Out Welcome
By Antony Shugaar
Furio Colombo, who holds the San Pao�lo Chair of International Journalism at
Co�lumbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, has an impressively
eclectic r�sum�: former chairman of Fiat USA, chairman of the publishing
company Fab�bri Bompiani, and longtime columnist for La Stanpa, a Turin dai�ly
and one of Italy's most respected papers. Mr. Colombo is, more�over, the
director of la Rivista dei Libri, the Italian-and the only,
foreign-language---edition of The New York Review of Brooks, a joint venture
of the American publication with Fabbri Bompiani. He is the di�rector of the
Italian Cul�tural Institute, which is mai rained by the Ital�ian consulate in
New. York, And when, two years ago, he was ap�pointed to the San Paolo Chair,
The New York Times gushed that Mr. Colombo, then 60, had "added yet an�other
facet to his career."
The Times failed to note that virtually all the facets belong to one
Ritz-sized di�amond: Fiat, Europe's largest car manu�facturer and the single
largest corporation in Italy, producing 4 percent of the country's gross
national product.
The Agnelli family, which controls Fiat, owns the publishing house, the
newspaper and the Italian edition of The New York Review of Books.
And the San Paolo Chair was endowed by the San Paolo bank, which is located in
Turin.  Turin is a Fiat company town, and the San Paulo bank does a great deal
of business with the auto�mobile company.
Just what machina�tions underlay Mr. Colombo's appoint�ment to the chair has
been the subject of speculation at the jour�nalism school; sonic sources there
have said that the chair was en�dowed at Mr. Colom�bo's own instigation, and
with the condition that he sit in it. But the appointment has also prompted
questions of journalistic ethics - How independent can an international
journalist be who has for years been on the payroll of the largest
cor�poration in Italy ? - as well as questions about the extent to which
chairs at Co�lumbia University are for sale.
Agnelli's Man at Columbia Wearing Out His Welcome
Professor Colombo, who teaches a course in international  journalism, brushes
aside the suggestion that his relationship to Fiat is closer than a
journalist's should he. " I am an intellectual and the important thing is to
do your work well," he told The Observer. "I know myself, and I know the level
of independence and reliability my life offers. I know what I write, and I
know what I am in the eyes of the Italians "
According to a memo From the jour�nalism school dean's office to the faculty
dated June 30, Mr. Colombo will go on leave next year, ostensibly to work on a
book about China. "I may or may not go on leave next year," he told The
Observer in early July.
"His appointment was on a year-to-year basis. [The professor] was supposed to
change and there 
would be another Italian journalist teaching," said Ken Goldstein, a professor
at the journalism school.
Agnelli Courtier
Mr. Colombo, dapper, urbane, the author of 21 books, is a charismatic and
self-assured man. Among his friends and ac�quaintances he counts Gay Talese,
Henry  Kissinger, Gerald Ford and Umberto Eco. His most important friend,
however, is his patron, Gianni Agnelli, the dynastic head of Fiat and a noted
bon vivant. "He has always been � Agnelli's personal man in New York," said
Claudio Gatti, a correspondent for Rizzoli's Europeo, also
Fiat-owned."Ag�nelli needs to be entertained--he gets bored--and Colombo does
that."
"Agnelli is the King of Italy," said Gay Talese. "He comes out of a Medici
mythology, and so Furio Colombo is a prince of sorts to that court, a cultural
prince, a cul�tural attach�."
The story of Mr. Colombo�s arrival at the journalism school begins in May
1991, with a $17,5 million donation from the Italian Government to Columbia,
intended to renovate the venerable Casa Italiana, a building on Amsterdam
Avenue that is the locus of Columbia's Italian studies and activities, and to
establish a postgraduate res�earch center, called the Italian Academy for
Advanced Studies in America. Along with Mr. Colombo and Susanna Agnelli, Mr.
Agnelli's sister, the academy's board at first featured Francesco Cossiga,
former President of Italy, who resigned last year, as well as seven-time
Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, now under a cloud of scandal and soon
to face charges of or�dering the Mafia-implemented execution of a journalist
named Mino Pecorelli, and Michael Sovern, who stepped down as president of
Columbia--not under a cloud of scandal-- in June. An honorary fellow of the
academy is Gianni De Michelis, ItaIy's former Foreign Minister, now facing
prosecution on numerous corruption charges.
Soon after the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies was established in 1991, a
call was put out for corporate donations from Italian companies with a
presence in New York. The San Paolo bank was one of the first to respond.
(Marisella Lorch, the academy�s  director, had been hopeful of getting a new
endowment for a new chair in either medicine or archeology, from an
association of alumni of Rome's La Sapienza university, an association headed
by Mr. Andreotti, but the project is currently on hold. "The time is not
right," she told The Observer. 'They say to me, let us get out of trouble
first.")
Self-Nominated ?
Here the situation becomes more complex. That the San Paolo Chair of
Interna�tional Journalism was endowed for $1.8 million in June 1991, and that
Furio Colombo now sits in it, are not open to dispute. But sources at the
university and at the bank have said that the gift was not a
no-strings-attached donation; rather it came at the solicitation of Mr.
Colombo himself. "It was Furio Colombo's wish that we set up this
professorship in international jour�nalism," Luisella Giorda, head of the
bank's public relations division, told a reporter from Lingua Franca, not long
after Mr. Colombo�s post was announced.
'Furio Colombo is a prince o sorts to [the Agnelli] court,
a cultural prince, a cultural attach�.'  - Gay Talese
Mr. Colombo's post was announced. At any rate, the search for a candidate to
fill the chair was perfunctory at best, according to various of the professors
involved. ''Dean [Joan Konner] said that there was this wonderful man they had
been introduced to as the ideal candidate, ''said Karen Rothmyer, who, as a
professor at the journalism school, was on the committee for appointments, and
is now a business re�porter for Newsday. ''As far as I was ever io}ld Oq
he.ard, there was ever told or heard, there was never any other candidate. I
did make a point of reading the only book [by Mr. Colombo] that I knew of that
had been translated into English [God in America, published by Co-lumbia
University Press], I felt it was not the work of a true scholar, it was pretty
disjointed, and the information was large�ly taken from newspaper clippings."
"His name was not generated by our faculty, but by the Academy," Phyllis
Garland, a tenured professor at the journalism school and another member of
the committee on appointments, told The Observer. 'I am not certain that we
knew he was a member of the board of the Academy. We weren't aware of the
extent of the links to Fiat".�
  He was a present to us, "Ms. Garland continued. "The money did not come from
our budget, and he filled a position that we had not established. If we had
established the position, we would have advertised. But there was no
advertising for this position. He came by a different avenue. "
Joan Konner, dean of the journalism school, had a somewhat different view of
Mr. Colombo's appointment. "A search was done," she told this reporter some
six months ago. "There were definitely other candidates. " However, she could
not recall if the other names where brought before the committee.
However the selection process was conducted, many--on both sides of the
Atlantic--have wondered whether a man of Mr. Colombo's background should be
teaching journalism at all. "We don't con�sider him to be a journalist," said
Giorgio Bocca, a columnist for L�Espresso.  "He is a different sort of
journalist--he's rich, he's powerful, he's anomalous. He is more a
businessman, or a high-Level P.R. man than he is a journalist. He is an
ambassador for the Agnelli family, and he spends much of his time on that."
Mr. Bocca added, "More than a chair in journalism, he should have a chair in
ca�reer advancement."
An American journalist based in Italy for a leading American news
organiza�tion--who asked not to be named--said, "It seems like a conflict of
interest to me. It seems like he can't help but protect [Fiat], even
subconsciously ... That's fine in Italy, that's the way it works over here.
But I think it's bad to have someone teaching American journalists different
standards."
And Ms. Garland said, "One of the problems we saw was that of a different
con�cept of journalism between America sad Italy. There is a different set of
Rules, es�pecially about relations with business. The point of view of someone
 writing about what happens in society must be separate, independent. That was
a major question,"
Ms. Kenny said, "We were aware there was a different environment in Italy.
Cor�porations there are like college campuses. There is a great corporate
contribution to the cultural life of the country."
In his defense, Mr. Colombo said that in Italy, he la a respected and
much-read jour�nalist, and that, furthermore, he does not 
Write about economics or business. "When they made Pablo Neruda the ambassador
to France, "he said, "was he made ambassador because he was a poet, or was he
considered a poet because he was
ambassador ? " As an example of his independence from Fiat, he pointed out
that he wrote books in favor of Israel at a time when Libya' state oil company
had taken a 10 percent share in Fiat. "I don't think any P.R. man has engaged
in soiling strongly opinionated books at odds with the firm that employs him,
"he explained. 'That is La regarding the idea that I ever did P.R. If I was a
P.R. man, I was an extremely in�convenient one. "
Get Me Rewrite !
Mr. Colombo's two years at Columbia have not been smooth sailing.
A professional editor reportedly had to be hired to edit the pieces his
students sub�mitted. "There had been complaints about his editing, " a source
at the journalism school said. "It was presented as a prob�lem with his
English, but a number of stu�dents seemed to feel. Differently."
Soon after Mr. Colombo was hired, a student interviewed him for a piece that
later appeared in the magazine Lingua Franca (and to which this reporter also
contributed). "He presented the matter at a fac-ulty meeting, and said that he
was upset at this inappropriate interview," recalled Ms. �Rothmyer, "We  told
him that a journalist is free to ask any question that the journal�ist wants
to ask, and that that included a student journalist ... I became convinced
that this was someone who didn't under-stand the American way of journalism."
A source at the journalism school said that word was the faculty had
recom�mended that Mr. Colombo not be asked back after this year. Several
professors close to the process at the journalism school would neither confirm
nor deny that such a recommendation had been made, and Ms. Konner did not
return calls seeking comment. But one professor said that a meet�ing between
Ms. Konner and Mr. Colombo took place in late May "to determine what was to be
done. "
-- 
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