In Which I Phone it in Again

I'm around J's tonight. He promised me it would be a light one, but he's promised me many things before, like he wouldn't take the piss out of my ginger beard, and that he wouldn't form a political party with Anton Drexler. Due to a drunken promise to R, who will be there, I have shaved my bushy beard into an Alan Rickman Sheriff of Nottingham type thing (or so I thought I had, I remembered the beard wrong. Now I just have a douchebag beard). The result of this is that I have no spare time to blog, so here's something I prepared earlier...

21/1/11


Burlesque only? No, huge amounts of corruption too.

These articles are meant to comprise of events that are unfolding, or have unfolded recently, but I could write about the 74th richest man in the world (according to Forbes) at any time, because he’s always in the news. This man holds amongst his possessions the football club A.C Milan. He is a politician, and all the palaver that went on in Britain with MPs claiming expenses for duck houses and love seats simply pales in comparison with what this man is alleged to have done. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the Prime Minister of Italy and Archduke of Demons, Silvio Berlusconi.
 
It’s difficult to know where to start with the man- the word limit on this article means it’s utterly impossible to cover every “indiscretion” he has been involved in, or has been alleged to be party to. We’ll start with the press. He owns it. That is to say, he owns 3 of 7 channels nationally broadcast on terrestrial television, and let’s say that the Leader of the Italian Opposition doesn’t get much chance to appear in party political broadcasts on them. Coupled with the power he has as Prime Minister, being able to “strongly suggest” the choice of the management bodies of the other channels, he effectively has control of 90% of all national television. He also owns the largest publishers in Italy, which gives him the option to print sycophantic magazines and the like, and his brother Paulo owns a newspaper. This is not right. Imagine the uproar if Rupert Murdoch became an M.P and used his affluence and influence to weasel his way to becoming the Prime Minister. Berlusconi of course disagrees, explaining that if he is looking out for everyone's interests as well as his own that there can't be a conflict of interests.
    
Berlusconi has an uncanny ability to be called to court, but he has hit upon a rather handy way to make his legal problems go away. He has passed much self-serving legislation, most key of which is shortening the amount of time that crimes can be prosecuted for. He employs a cabal of lawyers to make damn well sure that by the time the dust has settled and everyone has stopped squabbling that by the time any of his cases come to trial, the infringement was so long ago he is immune to prosecution- by his own admission he has paid around 200,000,000 euros. However, he said that he had spent this money over the years on consultants and judges, before correcting himself to say consultants and lawyers. An easy mistake-a to make-a, I'm sure.
We'll gloss over his mafia involvement and his hiding behind political immunity and move straight onto what I like to call “Things Berlusconi has said which make Prince Philip seem like a diplomat.” On the father of fascism, Mussolini, he said "Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.” This is the equivalent of Angela Merkel saying that the invasion of Poland was actually a goodwill visit. He offered to act as a broker in ushering in better relations with the U.S and the new Russian President, commenting “I don't see problems for Medvedev to establish good relations with Obama because he is young, handsome and even tanned.” Perhaps best known is his bucking up of the population of the Abruzo region that he toured after a devastating earthquake that killed over 300 and made around 65,000 homeless. He asked those communities who had lost their homes to think of it as a camping trip, and asked a local councillor if he could fondle her. I wonder if even he would think that's crass in retrospect.
 
So what is it that people are actually starting to believe could topple the man with the impossibly low political centre of gravity? It's too depressing and detailed to fully chronicle here, but essentially it involves lying to the police, abusing his position of power by having sex with an underage prostitute. No doubt Signor Berlusconi will say that this is just another example of the left trying  to besmirch his good name as they so often have before. One last quote from the great man himself:
 
"I am without doubt the person who's been the most persecuted in the entire history of the world and the history of man."
 
To Silvio’s many characteristics we must also add dyslexia. He obviously was trying to say prosecuted.

Today's Tune