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.
SATURN SMITH 