People who shook hands with Silvio Berlusconi, as popular Prime Minister of Italy or as a businessman engulfed in alleged dubious deals, should wash them of him in the strongest available antiseptic. The man stinks. Never mind his private life. Robustly Mediterranean, he seems to like women. Whatever their age and size.
He likes nubile 18-year olds. He doesn’t’ mind sleeping with a lush escort lady, believing – to be kind to him – that she was someone enchanted by his aura and eager enough to jump into bed with him.
That fact that she made €2,000 off the friend of his who had hired her services for the evening was outside his ken, he says. Within it was the bacchanalian evening he had dreamed up. He didn’t know the lady was, essentially, a common prostitute. For him to think that she was a lady rapidly bowled over by his 73-year-old attraction was an even wilder admission.
Judge not, though, for we are all human. But he doesn’t admit it. He tries to brazen his way out of that intimate situation.
He brings down the temple on an escort with guts and guile, impervious to the fact that he is bringing the temple down upon himself. Samson, at least, planned it that way. This gentleman seems to believe that everybody else will be crushed, escort lady included, except himself.
That is the least of it, since many Italians, not just the bawdy among them, forgive him for it. Far worse is the fact that he uses his parliamentary position to pass laws that essentially protect him against legal action for business misdemeanours. He legislates immunity for himself. This mid-week the Italian constitutional court appears to have called an end to it, to restore the principle that all are equal before the law.
But, has it?
Berlusconi, with his billions of euros and backing in the Italian parliament, will probably wriggle out of it once again. Where will that leave Italy? That bureaucratic ridden, mafia infested country will soldier on. Italians soldier on because there is also so much good within whatever it is that is Italy. So much beauty. So much culture. So much innocence.
Berlusconi will survive because of all that. So will Italy. The fact remains, though, that Italy is led by a prime minister, by the man Berlusconi, who is a disgrace.
Not because of his private life. Not because of his business reality. But because he tries to mask both by the fact that he is the prime minister of the republic. He brazenly expects voters to absolve him of his sins. In the process he dirties his voters with the same dirt that makes up much of his being.
He will probably win the day. He may well overturn the court judgment against him. He is likely to design his own marble statue to stand on his string of apparent successes.
But he will never be more than the shallowest among the shallow. A blot on all that modern Italy stands for. Blight on the European Union too.
Not least because the EU is, above all, an applied thesis about democracy. About what people should do that is good for them and for others.
Berlusconi is very good for himself. Yet not at all good for the Italian people. He whips up adulation, and he has his media empire to thank for securing that. But he does not secure respect among those who see things for what they really are.
He acts like a clown and is applauded for it. He greets Michelle Obama as if she were a showgirl and the lady beams a grin in appreciation. He says that the Italian law courts are all politically motivated and want to drive their knives into him. Fact is that he drives the knife into himself.
He has it all, power, money, the lot. Yet, he is unworthy of respect. That is something money and power will not and cannot buy.
So what? This sort of judgment, uttered by thousands times thousands, will not halt him in his tracks. Berlusconi will continue to do his damndest to ride roughshod over decency, basic ethics and various other aspects of democracy. He has the muscle to do it. He will succeed in his country.
Should he succeed too in the rest of the EU? The EU we hope for is an entity rooted in democracy and decency, in pursuing positive principle and striving to change the negatives that abound. It is not, or at least should not be an EU of insensate monkeys. It should be a union which, though it does not condemn the affairs of an individual, should frown openly upon them.
If the rule of law means anything within the EU, it should mean that much in Italy. So long as Berlusconi stymies that basic principle, the EU can only be a mockery of itself. Berlusconi mocks Italy. He should not be allowed to mock anywhere else. The unspeakable should be put in its place.