Nothing New, Really (from Pornocracy to Berlusconi)

Valle d’Aosta, Italy (March 14, 2009)

Italy is a country where old and new coexist in a seamless fashion. Medioeval castles are casually scattered in the middle of modern neighborhoods. In many cities all over Italy you cannot dig a new underground train line without bumping into 2,000 years old ruins. The structure of the state, and the legal system itself, are direct descendants of the ancient Rome institutions. What the heck... if you think of it, the main religious authority, successfully meddling in the country’s civil and political life, is an absolute monarchy funded two millennia ago and still thriving.

With this background it is perhaps not surprising that italians are used to good and bad governments, scandals of bribery, corruption, sex and whatever you can imagine. The papacy itself, during the 10th century “saeculum obscurum” (dark age) also known as the period of “pornocracy”, was ruled by powerful women that arranged the election and murder of their lovers and illegitimate sons as Popes. Italians have seen a lot.

That may explain why nobody seems to be really shocked by what is happening these days. Imagine a country where a powerful public official is caught in a sex scandal involving prostitutes and cocaine, many of them flown to his state and private residences by air force airplanes. Imagine a country where the wife of another public official accuses him publicly of “consorting with minors”. Imagine a country where a public official has been involved in several cases of corruption, and escaped being convicted only because of the statute of limitation, or because he promoted a law absolving himself from any penal consequence of his actions. Imagine a country where yet another official was part of a secret society conspiring to overthrow the government. Imaging a country where a public official is also owner of most of the media, insurance and retail industry, in total absence of an anti-trust law, and uses his dominant position to make public calls to remove unsympathetic journalists from the public TV, and to boycott opposition newspapers by depriving them of advertisement revenues.

Now imagine a country where all of the above refers to the same official, that happens to be the prime minister, and then you have found Italy. Now, as I was saying above, Italians have seen a lot in their multi-thousand year’s history, so it is perhaps not so surprising that the ratings of Silvio Berlusconi have not suffered the least from all these scandals. Maybe Berlusconi is right, italian men like him the way he is, “an exaggerated, cartoon version of your standard italian male stereotype: vain, pompous, full of hot air, patronising and sexually insecure”. Still, what about italian women? How can they put up on with a system in which the easiest way for a woman to have a political career in Berlusconi’s party, is to be pretty, not too much dressed and possibly sleep with somebody important? Is Italy the land that feminism forgot?