Comparing the US and Italy.
Today's a particularly rich day for political news in these two remarkable countries. The UN has issued a report condemning the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a story which the Italian press features along with a report about the new photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, European regulators are examining an energy company and Italian communications companies for antitrust violations. In the past week, Berlusconi has compared himself to Napoleon Bonaparte and Jesus Christ. But Dick Cheney shot and, depending on what you make of it, almost killed the man who funded Karl Rove's first political business venture. Now I wonder what Berlusconi would have said in similar circumstances. And, apparently oblivious of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the NSA wiretapping scandal, the Senate seems about to renew the USA Patriot Act. And in Italy it is against election laws to discuss polling results without identifying publicly the pollster and the data, a rule which Berlusconi has broken by bragging that his private polls show him in the lead--the rising from the dead that make him similar to Jesus. Christ. His pollster appears to be Frank Luntz, who crafted for him a "Contract with the Italians," patterned on the 1994 Republican "Contract with America." Minuscule amounts of each seem to have been enacted.
This morning, taking my daughter to school, I picked up the newspapers, and the cover of one had a picture of an unidentifiable Iraqi civilian corpse, burnt beyond recognition ("Daddy, is that a man or a woman?") by white phosphorous. I began my day by trying to explain what that picture meant. Another paper featured the latest Abu Ghraib pictures. As far as I can tell, unlike the British, the Italian military and electorate seem untouched by this kind of scandal. The Iraq War is a far smaller campaign issue than the controversy over a high-speed rail line in northern Italy.
The big ink today was spilled on Berlusconi's links with right-wing extremists, and the featured picture showed him with Mussolini's granddaughter. This would never happen in the US. The electoral system works to homogenize the parties. In Italy and other parliamentary countries, of course, the system allows small parties to represent the less cultivated areas of the political spectrum, and a communist can call herself a communist. Winning power usually requires some support from the ideological hinterlands. So a lot of attention gets paid to the cracks in the coalitions, just as in the US, but the cracks are much bigger. Does this make politics healthier? Wait and see....
Today's a particularly rich day for political news in these two remarkable countries. The UN has issued a report condemning the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a story which the Italian press features along with a report about the new photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, European regulators are examining an energy company and Italian communications companies for antitrust violations. In the past week, Berlusconi has compared himself to Napoleon Bonaparte and Jesus Christ. But Dick Cheney shot and, depending on what you make of it, almost killed the man who funded Karl Rove's first political business venture. Now I wonder what Berlusconi would have said in similar circumstances. And, apparently oblivious of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the NSA wiretapping scandal, the Senate seems about to renew the USA Patriot Act. And in Italy it is against election laws to discuss polling results without identifying publicly the pollster and the data, a rule which Berlusconi has broken by bragging that his private polls show him in the lead--the rising from the dead that make him similar to Jesus. Christ. His pollster appears to be Frank Luntz, who crafted for him a "Contract with the Italians," patterned on the 1994 Republican "Contract with America." Minuscule amounts of each seem to have been enacted.
This morning, taking my daughter to school, I picked up the newspapers, and the cover of one had a picture of an unidentifiable Iraqi civilian corpse, burnt beyond recognition ("Daddy, is that a man or a woman?") by white phosphorous. I began my day by trying to explain what that picture meant. Another paper featured the latest Abu Ghraib pictures. As far as I can tell, unlike the British, the Italian military and electorate seem untouched by this kind of scandal. The Iraq War is a far smaller campaign issue than the controversy over a high-speed rail line in northern Italy.
The big ink today was spilled on Berlusconi's links with right-wing extremists, and the featured picture showed him with Mussolini's granddaughter. This would never happen in the US. The electoral system works to homogenize the parties. In Italy and other parliamentary countries, of course, the system allows small parties to represent the less cultivated areas of the political spectrum, and a communist can call herself a communist. Winning power usually requires some support from the ideological hinterlands. So a lot of attention gets paid to the cracks in the coalitions, just as in the US, but the cracks are much bigger. Does this make politics healthier? Wait and see....
posted by jnerone at 1:41 PM
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