This story about the current Italian elections tells you all you need to know about the seriousness with which the western media take politics overseas. Berlusconi has pledged to abstain from screwing til after the election, supposedly to attract the family values crowd. Even the Pope thinks that's bullshit, judging from last weekend's encyclical. Of course, his wife is twenty years younger than him.

Meanwhile, in the Italian press itself, the key news is about Berlusconi's resistance to the law requiring equal treatment of opposing candidates on television. He calls this version of the fairness doctrine "liberticide." (It sounds better in Italian.) The majestic equality of the laws, which forbids the rich as well as the poor from begging, stealing bread, and sleeping under bridges. That's (more or less) a quote from Anatole France, who also said, "In any well regulated society, wealth is a sacred thing. In a democracy, it's the only sacred thing."