Summary
[Silvio Berlusconi] truly is entertaining, in a crude sort of way. He is a compulsive clown, once making the sign of a cuckold's horns behind the head of a fellow dignitary in a group photo of national leaders. He rubbishes foreign cooking ("The Finns don't even know what prosciutto is."). He makes preposterous promises, like a month without taxes ("We probably wouldn't be able to do it because it would cost too much, but as you can see we don't lack imagination in solving problems."). He claims his Latin is good enough to have lunch with Julius Caesar.
So why did Italians give this 71-year-old charlatan a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament in this election, especially when the worst of the decline happened during his previous time in office? Perhaps the best answer lies in something written recently by political scientist and opinion poller Ilvo Diamanti: "Italian society has been hit by a real 'collapse of the future.' Almost two out of three Italians believe that in the near future the young will have a worse social and economic position than their parents."See the full content of this document
Extract
Rebirth for Italian Buffoon
Gwynne Dyer
'This is a wise country, a country that knows when a person is tired and has turned vicious, when it is time to turn over a new leaf."That was the upbeat assessment of Walter Veltroni, leader of the...See the full content of this document
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