This Week in Italy 326

Personal Items

I will be in Florida from June 22-29 to attend a Memorial Service on June 27 in Ft. Myers for my recently deceased brother-in-law. Although I will be busy with family matters, I will have some free time in case anyone reading this letter is in the area and would like to touch base. My sister’s phone number in Florida is 239-481-2059

Somebody sent me a subscription to the McSweeney’s literary journal. I never received a gift card, only copies of the journal. So thank you to whomever sent it if that person is a reader of this newsletter.

The K.C. Jones Band

This is name of local Pistoia combo. Clearly it is not an Italian name. I asked the leader about it and was told it was named after the American basketball player of the same name who played in the 1950s and 1960s and then became a coach. American professional basketball was practically unknown in Italy during those years. Maybe there is an American band somewhere named after an Italian soccer player of 50 years ago whose name has always been unknown in the USA, but I doubt it.

The Umteenth Example of All Things Bad that Arrive in Italy from USA

The news has a story of the arrest in Italy of members of the Italian motorcycle group called Hells Angels.

Chuckles

Does this brand of candy still exist in the USA? When I was a kid, I liked them, assorted fruit flavored candies covered in sugar. They were probably on the worst candy list of the American Dental Association. This type of candy still exists in Italy, and the flavors are much better than those of Chuckles.

The Symposium of the Club of Europe

The Club of Europe is an international organization that supports programs to provide a European sense of understanding and unity. The Pistoia chapter recently invited a representative group of local residents from other nations to discuss their experiences in Pistoia and to make suggestions. The mayor of Pistoia and the President of the Province of Pistoia were there. Some people spoke of broad issues; others made specific complaints. One person complained at how dirty the city was. The mayor said that the city could increase the frequency of street cleaning, but already there was a large deficit. He noted, as I have in the past, that Italians take little pride in the public space. It is perfectly acceptable to throw things on the ground, and nobody will reprimand you. He said when he went to Austria as a youth on a soccer team trip, he threw something on the ground, and immediately a local citizen admonished him. He did not understand German, but he got the point. When you go to the more German area of northern Italy, the streets are much cleaner.

Italian Schools

In general Italians think there school system is a good one, but when schools throughout the European Union are compared, Italy ends up spending more than the average and having student performance that is 2/3 of a year behind the European average. I think it is difficult to get high grades in Italy, but traditionally few students flunk. The government recently passed rules that strengthen academic standards and also require that students be flunked whose conduct grade is too low. The percentage of students who flunk has gone up noticeably. Of course, some of these failures can be made up in summer school. Whereas in the USA, there are commercial cram courses for students taking the SAT, in Italy there are cram schools for students to redo courses they took in high school in order to qualify for the university.

Given the child-centered environment in Italy, it is not surprising that school performance lags. If little Luigi doesn’t do well at school, it must be the fault of the teacher. Italians in general are quite cynical, but in the matter of their schools, they are overly optimistic.

The Brazilian War Memorial at Pistoia

This is the war memorial to Brazilian troops who fought in Italy in WWII. The curator of this memorial was at the Club of Europe dinner. I asked him why Brazil entered WWII when no other Latin American nation did so. He told me, as I had expected, that Brazil was pressured by the USA to do so. In return the USA agreed to buy a certain amount of exports from Brazil. Brazil sent 25,000 troops to Italy; a little fewer than 500 were killed. The nation of Brazil gives no money for the maintenance of the quite lovely war memorial at Pistoia. The curator said that Brazil does not want to pay pensions to the soldiers who fought in WWII or their survivors. So it ignores this part of the country’s history.

Italy 3 USA 1

I watched the soccer game between the two nations. Ironically the guy who scored two goals for Italy was born in the USA, but came to Europe to play professional soccer. In general it appears to me that the best player on the American team might be equal in skill to the least talented one on the Italian squad. It is sort of the opposite of basketball. The best player on the Italian national basketball team might qualify for the last spot on a team made up of the best American players (which our national team is not).

Article in May 11, 2009 Time Magazine about Silvio Berlusconi

The author is one of the best known commentators on life and culture in Italy. Note that the Italians forgive Sivlio’s vices. They are not upset by his lack of accomplishments as a leader. In a country where politics is often done in the fashion of the theatre, he is a supreme showman. One of his first jobs was as a singer on a cruise liner. If this is what the Italians prefer, this is certainly their right. They simply should not be surprised that what they find entertaining and/or forgivable much of the rest of the world sees as buffoonery

Silvio Berlusconi: An Italian Mirror

By BEPPE SEVERGNINI

What do Italians make of Silvio Berlusconi? Easy. Most think: “He’s one of us.” He loves his family, his football, his friends, his food. And his money, of course. He praises the church in the morning, family values in the afternoon and hangs around with young women at night — at 72, that’s quite an achievement. He is fun, no doubt. On the left, most politicians are boring. Beating them? Piece of cake, for Silvio the maverick.

Many Italians don’t care about his conflicts of interest (who hasn’t got a few?) or his problems with the law (defendants are more simpatico than prosecutors). Broken promises, half-truths, unanswered questions? The word accountability doesn’t translate well into Italian. This is the land of human nature, as one American traveller once said. And of emotional politics. France is a bit like that too. It’s no coincidence that a bright, quick, short populist, who also happens to be a bit of a ladies’ man, is running the show in Paris. Like us, the French see politicians the way the British see City bankers. We forget and forgive, even though we shouldn’t.

His gaffes? The majority of Italians think Berlusconi just speaks his mind, and they don’t care if foreigners are puzzled, or worse. Some remarks are unforgivable, of course. Obama’s suntan, jokes about concentration camps, sexist comments. If you head a government you must know that your words — reported instantly, compressed into sound bites — can baffle foreigners. Italians abroad know this. They complain, rightly, that Berlusconi’s faux pas allow those who don’t like Italy to ridicule us, ignoring the good things we do around the world.

To be fair, foreign media sometimes exaggerate the incidents. Calling out to the American President in front of Queen Elizabeth II, after the official photo op at the G-20 in London (“Mr. Obamaaa! I’m Mr. Berlusconi!”) was a lovely Borat moment — harmless, and quite funny. Talking on his mobile while Angela Merkel was waiting for him at the NATO summit? He was just showing off (“I can convince Turkish leader Erdogan to accept Rasmussen as head at NATO. Leave it to me, guys.”) And when he told earthquake victims in Abruzzo to think of their situation “like a weekend of camping,” sure, it didn’t sound good to an outsider. But most Italians understood Mr. B. was just trying to sdrammatizzare, to play down the situation, defuse the tension.

Berlusconi is a seasoned politician (he was first in office in 1994, and he’s the only European head of government born before World War II), and he knows that international misunderstandings don’t harm him at home — and often quite the contrary. Those who criticize him don’t vote for him anyway.

His gaffes are not part of any grand strategy. Most likely they are spontaneous, the result of nouveaux-riches insecurities, fermented in self-esteem and turned into cockiness. Proud of his achievements — first real estate, then television and soccer, finally politics — the man thinks he can say what he likes, when he likes to whomever he likes.

He’s popular. A mixture of Juan Perón and Frank Sinatra. Never a dull moment. Does the Italian media criticize him? Not his papers and his TV stations. Nor, with a few exceptions, state-controlled outlets such as Rai. The right-wing press adores him. The left-wing press despises him. Only a few papers — including my own Corriere della Sera — discuss him day by day, case by case, column by column.

Does this make Italy an authoritarian state? Of course not. We are too anarchic to allow anyone to tell us what do for long (they all failed, from Caesar Augustus to Benito Mussolini). Berlusconi has won three elections, lost two, and democracy is alive and (almost) well. Italy is like a postmodern signoria — think the Sforza in Milan, the Medici in Florence — led by a benevolent elder well-liked by his subjects.

Is Berlusconi a good Prime Minister? Let’s just say he’s not much worse than his predecessors, and he sells himself better. He hasn’t solved Italy’s perennial problems — runaway public debt, red tape, organized crime, corruption, a grinding justice system and aging infrastructure — but at least he’s provided stability. Italy averaged almost a government a year between the end of World War II and the turn of the century. Berlusconi completed his term between 2001 and 2006; re-elected in 2008, he may well last until 2013.

The truth is that Berlusconi is not only Italy’s head of government, but the nation’s autobiography. He combines generosity, inconsistency, acting talent, stamina, tactical lapses of memory and loyalty. He promises things he doesn’t do, and does things he’s never mentioned. His Italian opponents — even the best, the most honest and lucid — are right to worry. Not about Berlusconi himself. But about the Berlusconi inside them.

Severgnini, a columnist for Corriere della Sera, is the author of La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

One Thing Beppe Severgnini Forgot to Say in the Article Above

With his face lifts and hair transplants, Silvio is hardly a model of growing old gracefully. Here too he mirrors Italy. Plastic surgeons in Italy estimate that half of their clients are over 65.