Well, at least we aren’t Italy

Every time I think an American politician has made a newsworthy, or even ground-breaking decision of dumb, Silvio Berlusconi steps up to remind me that things could be so, so much worse.  Via ABC news:

Italian lothario and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has lashed out at reports that women were paid to spend the night at his home by announcing he has “never paid for a woman.”

Berlusconi made the comments to Italian gossip magazine Chi in response to claims by a former model, Patrizia D’Addario, that she had been paid to attend his private parties.

Calling the reports “trash” the Italian prime minister hit back by saying D’Addario had been paid to smear Berlusconi.

”Behind Patrizia D’Addario is someone who is out to get me and she (Patrizia) has been paid well, they have a deliberate campaign against me,” he charged.

In a statement to the ANSA news agency, D’Addario denied she had been paid to create a scandal.

There’s so much wrong in this whole thing, starting with that first line.  When a news organization describes a prime minister as an “Italian lothario” before even giving his title, and that shoe fits like the handmade Italian piece that it should, something’s foul.  Then, we have Berlusconi talking to a gossip magazine — please try to imagine the American equivalent — and over all of this, that it seems possible, and even likely, that D’Addario’s story is true.

Oh, Silvio Berlusconi.  Everything about you reminds me of why the media must stay independent of the government — because in a country with a freer press, I can’t imagine you would have been in power this long.

Sex Scandal “Survivor”

It turns out all kinds of news comes in threes.  Even sex scandal-related news.  Who knew?  These guys:

In Italy, the Prime Minister has been publicly criticized by his wife for flirting with TV presenters and harming her dignity, for considering unqualified but very attractive candidates to run for office, and now for attending the birthday party of an 18-year-old aspiring actress who apparently calls the 72-year-old Silvio Berlusconi “Daddy.”  It’s been announced Veronica Lario, his wife of 19 years, will seek a divorce — and no one seems to expect this to have much impact on Berlusconi’s upcoming election campaign at all.

Back in the U.S., John Edwards is under investigation for whether his campaign made any inappropriate payments to his mistress, Rielle Hunter.  Hunter was definitely paid $114,000 by Edwards’s political action committee, One America, for her videos of Edwards on the campaign trail, and may have received financial assistance from another Edwards supporter, Fred Baron.  At issue is whether those payments were for legitimate work or whether they might be hiding, well, hush money that Edwards funneled through the campaign.  Edwards says he is “confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly.”  Luckily, Edwards has that Sun-setter Retractable Awnings after-school job in case anything goes more wrong with his political life.

Also in the U.S., “A majority of New York voters would rather see Eliot Spitzer, the state’s hooker-happy former governor, back in office than his beleaguered successor, Gov. Paterson, a new poll revealed Monday.”  Please note: That’s the New York Daily News calling him “hooker-happy,” not me, though I am amused by the alliteration.  Spitzer, he of the slow, cover-story subtle comeback, is in particular demand these days: his specialty as New York Attorney General was prosecuting bad behavior on Wall Street, and his name has been floated as a possible candidate for New York City Mayor (or Senate?)  in the future.  The looming question, apparently, is “has he paid enough?”  New Yorkers seem to think so — and they may even be thinking, right now, that they wish he’d never left at all.

So if this was, say, Survivor: Affair Island, who would you vote off?  Who will survive?  Can anyone picture a way back to prominence — or even relevance — for John Edwards?