It seems to have legs.
I'll admit to some surprise over how long the controversy over the cartoons of the prophet has run. Just when it seems about to die down, something--a new provocation, a weekend--happens to prolong it.
This past week an Italian minister unbottoned his shirt on tv to reveal a t-shirt printed with the infamous cartoons. Over the weekend rioters in Libya attacked an Italian consulate and were fired on by Libyan security forces. The minister was forced to resign, with Berlusconi himself requesting the resignation, along with many members of the opposition. And today La Repubblica has published a long letter by the main opposition candidate, Romano Prodi, commenting on the controversy.
This is the sort of document that just doesn't appear in US politics anymore. In the US, a proxy--maybe George Will--would write a column trotting out similar arguments, but a candidate would never risk such fulsome expression. The whole point of every utterance from a US candidate for almost any office is to say the most obvious things without pissing anyone off. Even a strongly worded speech by a potential candidate--say Al Gore--is treated like a tantrum. And, of course, no major politician would actually write his or her own stuff in the US.
There's something to be said for unscripted politics. It obliges you to pay attention to what people actually say, rather than to dismiss all the overt content in a pointless search for their strategies. On the other hand, unscripted politics is dangerous. Roberto Calderoli, the minister of "reforms" who wore the offending t-shirt, is a case in point. Here is a guy going freelance on Rai 1, the Italian equivalent of the BBC. As Prodi points out, you can't blame the Islamic world for considering the performance of an Italian minister on state-owned tv an official act.
Let's suppose it was a swastika on his t-shirt. I'd've freaked. Wouldn't you?
Would the swastika be such a weird thing in Italy? Wander through any public park in parts of northern Italy and you'll see them spray-painted on all available surfaces. A parking-lot bar in Bardolino, one of the key tourist stops in the lakes region, sells bottles of local wine with labels like "Fuhrer" and "Hitler." It's hard to take this seriously, of course. But, in a continent where many countries have made Holocaust denial a crime, it's also hard to think that public expression is "just words." I'll believe that the day a US presidential candidate declares herself an atheist.
I'll admit to some surprise over how long the controversy over the cartoons of the prophet has run. Just when it seems about to die down, something--a new provocation, a weekend--happens to prolong it.
This past week an Italian minister unbottoned his shirt on tv to reveal a t-shirt printed with the infamous cartoons. Over the weekend rioters in Libya attacked an Italian consulate and were fired on by Libyan security forces. The minister was forced to resign, with Berlusconi himself requesting the resignation, along with many members of the opposition. And today La Repubblica has published a long letter by the main opposition candidate, Romano Prodi, commenting on the controversy.
This is the sort of document that just doesn't appear in US politics anymore. In the US, a proxy--maybe George Will--would write a column trotting out similar arguments, but a candidate would never risk such fulsome expression. The whole point of every utterance from a US candidate for almost any office is to say the most obvious things without pissing anyone off. Even a strongly worded speech by a potential candidate--say Al Gore--is treated like a tantrum. And, of course, no major politician would actually write his or her own stuff in the US.
There's something to be said for unscripted politics. It obliges you to pay attention to what people actually say, rather than to dismiss all the overt content in a pointless search for their strategies. On the other hand, unscripted politics is dangerous. Roberto Calderoli, the minister of "reforms" who wore the offending t-shirt, is a case in point. Here is a guy going freelance on Rai 1, the Italian equivalent of the BBC. As Prodi points out, you can't blame the Islamic world for considering the performance of an Italian minister on state-owned tv an official act.
Let's suppose it was a swastika on his t-shirt. I'd've freaked. Wouldn't you?
Would the swastika be such a weird thing in Italy? Wander through any public park in parts of northern Italy and you'll see them spray-painted on all available surfaces. A parking-lot bar in Bardolino, one of the key tourist stops in the lakes region, sells bottles of local wine with labels like "Fuhrer" and "Hitler." It's hard to take this seriously, of course. But, in a continent where many countries have made Holocaust denial a crime, it's also hard to think that public expression is "just words." I'll believe that the day a US presidential candidate declares herself an atheist.
posted by jnerone at 12:25 PM
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