mbf tod@y

Is Italy Ready for a Reversal of Direction?

"Italy is the great country for reversing direction. That is perhaps why there have been sixty-two different governments since the Second World War—at least until the current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, figured out that if he and his family owned most of the media, along with sports teams and other key segments of the public sphere, he could bring Inversioni de Marcia to a halt. For the past few months Berlusconi’s enemies have been making one of their more serious efforts to force a national reversal of direction, and perhaps this time, against all odds, it will work. But for an American, or at least for an American still outraged by the Monica Lewinsky garbage, the Italian political spectacle is, not to put a fine point on it, disgusting." (Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Times Blog)

Read more

I'm not Italian... I've got nothing to do with Silvio Berlusconi [sigh]

"Berlusconi told a Milan rally of conservative supporters on Sunday that he was bringing greetings from the United States from "What's his name? Some tanned guy. Ah, Barack Obama!"

Shortly after Obama's election in November 2008, Berlusconi raised eyebrows by saying the victor was "young, handsome, and even has a good tan."

This time, Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul who began his career as a cruise ship entertainer, also took a jab at the First Lady.

"You won't believe it," he said, "but two of them went to the beach because the wife is also tanned." (Frances D'Emilio, Associated Press)

Read more

berlusconi will win the nobel prize for peace - and this fills my heart with joy

Thanks to Giancarlo Affri

bad taste: lancia delta sponsors the roadside bomb attack that killed six italian soldiers on italy's best selling newspaper

This is today's frontpage of Italy's best selling newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera. 

No, really. It has not been photoshopped. It's the 'real' thing. 

It makes me want to throw up. It's not even a matter of bad taste. It's just... pathetic. These poor soldiers have been killed twice. 

The juxtaposition of the headline ("Six dead soldiers") and the car slogan ("Power, Style, Technology") is just sickening. 

Congrats: You - advertisers and journalists - have now officially reached a new low. 

I look at this and I wonder why there's an article about a massacre in the middle of an ad that uses images of lions, fields, and trees to sell... a fucking car! ("Where they find their maximum expression" - who wrote this shameful copy? Really, get a life).

They say newspapers are in trouble. 

Well, do we really need Il Corriere della Sera?

Metilparaben - generatore automatico di proclami berlusconiani

qui (via Valentina Tanni)

“I’m currently at 68.4 percent in the approval ratings!And it’s not just because I’m handsome and not just because I’m young and capable. I also know how to transform this country and get things done.”

AFP/Getty Images, AP, Reuters

Berlusconi is Big In Egypt (via Trashopolis)

john foot has signed the petition, and you should too

Sign here for freedom of speech in Italy

PS: John Foot

"In Italy, what does not exist on TV does not exist." (Erik Gandini)

"The ban indicated the level of tension in Italy regarding everything that goes on TV," Gandini told the Independent. "In Italy, what does not exist on TV does not exist. I was scared by the ban, and by RAI's Orwellian-style letter, but the day after there was a huge explosion of interest on the internet."

Berlusconi's private life has long been fodder for scandalous stories throughout the European and international press, although his massive influence on Italian media has tended to keep a lid on domestic coverage. He exerts great power over the state broadcaster RAI and owns Italy's biggest publishing house as well as Mediaset's three national TV channels and major advertising division. Berlusconi's family also controls several major newspapers." (Ben Walters, The Guardian)

More TV news from the Neo-Fascist Dictatorship of Berlusconi, the country formerly known as Italy. The good news is that Berlusconi and his minions don't own the Internet. 

Yet. 

Read more

gender and italian culture - a bleak picture

"Compared to those in other European countries, conservative ideas in Italy die hard, in part because of our famously patriarchal culture but also because of the huge influence of the Roman Catholic Church, whose political and social interference in public affairs seems to have become even stronger since Mr. Berlusconi first became prime minister in 1994. (The church, for example, has threatened to excommunicate doctors who prescribe the abortion pill as well as patients who use it.)

Furthermore, Italy’s glass ceiling has proved to be more resistant than it is elsewhere in Europe. Italy ranks 67th out of 130 countries considered in a recent report of the World Economic Forum on the Global Gender Gap Index, ranking lower than Uganda, Namibia, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just under half of Italy’s women have jobs, compared with an average of nearly two out of three. At the same time, Italian men have 80 more minutes of leisure time per day — the greatest difference in the 18 countries compared. This is probably explained by the additional time that women devote to unpaid work, like cleaning the house. It is no surprise, then, that many Italian women are unwilling to take on an additional burden of raising children. As a result, the country has an extraordinarily low birthrate.

The Italian media only exacerbate this bleak reality by presenting a picture of women that is incomprehensible to the rest of Europe. Private TV channels have started to broadcast images of women who are typically lightly dressed and silent beauties serving as decoration while older, fully dressed men are running the show. (It is worth noting here that Mr. Berlusconi owns the leading private television networks.)" (Chiara Volpato, The New York Times)

Rule 1: If you want to understand Italy, read the foreign press.
Read more