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italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
As a long standing (and proud of it) subscriber of the Wall Street Journal I
can provide you with the aformentioned
"Don Coglioni" article.
Best wishes
Eddie Arcari
Don Coglioni
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
April 7, 2006; Page A12
MILAN -- For sheer kitsch and bawdy fun, this Italian campaign rivals the
worst of them. The main themes in the two-day parliamentary election
starting Sunday appear to be botany and soccer. The dozen parties in the
center-left Olive Tree Coalition include the Daisy party and the Rose in the
Fist. The Communist Refoundation, not to be confused with the Italian
Communists -- a separate Olive party -- employs a large green marijuana leaf
against a red background, as inspired by its drug legalization agenda. Its
posters here in the financial capital, in a sweet bit of irony, can be found
hanging next to the gleaming face of Alessandra Mussolini, il Duce's
granddaughter and a neo-Fascist pol. On the center-right, the "three
forwards" bloc is led by Forza Italia (Go Italy!), named after a chant of
the soccer pitch, and closely associated with the AC Milan team.
The substance, such as it is, of campaign debate is shaped by the country's
one notable achievement of recent years: its replacement of Germany as the
"sick man of Europe." Italy's minuscule growth and, more troubling for this
hot-blooded society, fertility figures, are dissected daily, mostly by the
resurgent Olive opposition. The favorite in this race, according to opinion
polls conducted before a March 24 blackout, is il Professore, the charmless
Romano Prodi, a professor of industrial policy who is a former prime
minister and European Commission president, back home from Brussels to lead
the Italian center-left.
And yet for all this noise and color, the election is not about any issue or
party but rather a man known as il Cavaliere, the knight. For the fourth
time in 12 years, Italians will vote up or down on Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, who is loved and despised with equal intensity. Author Beppe
Severgnini calls this weekend's main event a referendum. Mr. Berlusconi,
Italy's richest man (net worth: $12 billion) and its longest-serving postwar
leader, has divided, inspired, appalled and entertained not only Italy but
Europe. No one dares count out the country's greatest ever salesman, but his
troubles in this race are the result of his failure to deliver on the chief
promise of his landslide victory in 2001: a changed Italy.
Five years on, the country's politics still beg not to be taken seriously.
The scandal of the moment, a lead story even on the Berlusconi-owned news
networks, involves coglioni, a jarring slur, implying stupidity, derived
from the Italian word for testicles. As in this Berlusconi comment from last
Tuesday: "I have too much respect for the Italians to think there are that
many coglioni around who'd vote against their own interests." The opposition
was shocked, shocked. Silvio-bashers gleefully predicted this latest
vulgarity would push the undecideds into the Prodi camp. Of course, what the
prime minister claimed was meant ironically may turn out, if the vote swings
his way, to be more proof of his instinctive feel for what Italians want to
hear, or buy.
The coglioni affair is a high/low point of a long race. In Monday's second
debate, which was in theory held under Teutonic rules on speaking times and
decorum, Mr. Prodi characterized the prime minister as a "drunkard clinging
to a lamppost." Mr. Berlusconi, in turn, called his opponent "an idiot," and
throughout the campaign has managed to hog attention by simply being
himself.
On the day that Mr. Prodi put out Olive's campaign program, Mr. Berlusconi
stole the headlines by styling himself "the Jesus Christ of politics";
Napoleon, previously invoked as a historical mentor, was apparently no
longer grand enough. The soon-to-be 70-year-old prime minister has vowed to
refrain from sexual activity until after the elections; few believe him. He
did find time to poll telephone sex operators. Seven out of nine, he claims,
plan to vote for him. And so on.
Mr. Berlusconi may look foolish but he's no fool. In this election, with
little achievement from the past five years to sell, he has reverted to the
role that, as a tycoon and two-time prime minister, he would seem ill-suited
to play: the outsider. Somehow it fits him. Mr. Berlusconi is a self-made
man whose nouveaux-riche tastes and manners offend the smart set, which
naturally tilts left, as well as the old business families, which don't.
Another highlight was his screaming match at a meeting with the employers'
association. The press roundly mocked him but many ordinary Italians cheered
him on -- as crazy as it seems -- for standing up to the fat cats. These are
the same Italians who also smile when their prime minister wears a bandana
after another hair transplant or performs his own ballads at his villa on
Sardinia.
In his remarkable business career, launched by seed capital of uncertain
origin, Mr. Berlusconi succeeded by challenging and co-opting the
establishment, first in real estate and then to pry open TV to commercial
stations in the 1980s. Fond of TV chat shows and soccer, Italians are
equally grateful to him for turning AC Milan, an also-ran before Mr.
Berlusconi took it over, into a premier European club. "Silvio Berlusconi
revolutionized Italy as a CEO, not as a prime minister," says Christian
Rocca of the Milan daily Il Foglio, part of the Berlusconi media empire.
Many explanations are offered for his disappointing five years. One is the
system of concertazione, literally concert, which refers to the country's
messy coalition politics. Another is repeated assaults from prosecutors
dredging up old corruption allegations. Yet another is Mr. Berlusconi's
reluctance to dismantle the cozy guilds that protect professions, from taxi
drivers to journalists; as a businessman, he doesn't seem to believe in open
competition as a good in itself. But he did loosen up labor codes, in a
fashion that French leaders can only dream of, and lowered unemployment.
His greatest failure, his "read my lips" moment, is on taxes. He won an
unprecedented mandate in 2001 to lower and simplify rates, and could have.
He didn't. Having broken that pledge, his core constituency of small private
entrepreneurs is not so much turning to Mr. Prodi as staying home.
Italy's pathologies are serious. Its crushing debt burden (at 108.5% of GDP
in 2005), demographic crisis and uncompetitive industries pose the gravest
apparent danger to the euro, which many Italians want to drop for the old
lira. Mario Monti, former EU competition commissioner and now president of
Milan's Bocconi University, describes the euro-zone's third-largest economy
as "self-inflicted strangulation." It need not be so grim. In contrast to
the furies on French streets these days, Italians are protective of their
perks but not hostile to capitalism itself. "The French are the only ones
who have an alternative model in mind," Mr. Monti says. Italy could show
Germany and France a way out of the woods.
Only this election seems unlikely to shake things up. A new electoral law,
whose constitutionality -- in a little Italian twist -- is in some doubt,
will produce a less stable government. A hung parliament could force a rerun
of this circus in a few weeks. Assuming a clear winner emerges once polls
close on Monday morning, Italy will be the only country in Europe, except
for Lithuania, led by a prime minister born before WWII.
If that man isn't Mr. Berlusconi, it won't be because the latter backed the
war in Iraq or considers George Bush a friend. Iraq wasn't an issue in the
campaign; the alliance with the U.S. is a plus in a country that's tried,
mostly in vain, to join the big league ever since Mussolini invaded
Abyssinia. And it won't be a rebuke of Mr. Berlusconi's nominally
free-market ideas, which were never seriously implemented, or his various
business conflicts of interest, which everyone is aware of, or even of his
legal troubles, since prosecutors are politically tainted.
For 600 years, points out Beppe Severgnini, Italians have put up with being
ruled by i Signori -- grandees -- who in power are permitted to look after
their own interests provided everyone else benefits as well. Reviving the
winning formula of his last campaign, Mr. Berlusconi in Monday's debate
pledged, out of the blue, to abolish the hated property taxes. To deploy the
prime minister's own indelicate musings earlier this week: Are there enough
coglioni in Italy to take him at his word again? Or to risk ignoring him?
Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.
-----Original Message-----
From: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Daragh O'Connell
Sent: 18 April 2006 11:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [I-S] Fwd: Re: "The Pizza Parliament"
italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Dear List-members,
while I understand how some people might find 'pizza parliament'
offensive, I have to agree with Duncan McDonnell on this one. However,
offence seems at times to be selective and ideological. How about the
following front page heading from the British 'The Independent' from
last Wednesday? With a large photo of a very sullen looking Silvio
Berlusconi we read the following headline:
'END OF THE LINE FOR THE GODFATHER (AND ITALY'S TOP MAFIA BOSS IS
ARRESTED IN SICILY)'
Is this offensive? Or is it simply clever?
Best,
Daragh O'Connell
*********************************
Daragh O'Connell
Italian Studies
School of Languages, Literatures
and Film
University College Dublin
Dublin 4
IRELAND
Tel: +353-1-7168474
Fax: +353-1-7161175
Email: [log in to unmask]
*********************************
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