Looking at Italy from the USA
Italy is about the size of the state of Arizona. Almost every day, I look at an Italian newspaper on line. From the perspective of the USA, Italy appears to be a small country in which the news is highly repetitive. You understand why many Italians see the USA as a grand nation of variety, opportunity, and endless expanses. I find Italy a very enjoyable place to live, but it is easy to see that Italians who feel constricted by the parochial aspects of Italian life are attracted by the USA.
Below are items of interest I have culled recently from reading about Italy.
The Embarrassing Briefing Book Distributed by the White House
July 08, 2008
ABC News’ Jon Garcia Reports: It’s not often that a White House press briefing book gets world attention, but the book issued for the 2008 G8 Summit certainly grabbed headlines today when the Italian press discovered that a biography included of their Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, described him as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice” and “a political dilettante who gained his high office only through the use of his considerable influence on the national media.”
The Italian media outcry elicited a rare White House apology. In a written statement, WH spokesman Tony Fratto said, “We apologize to Italy and to the Prime Minister for this very unfortunate mistake … The sentiments expressed in the biography do not represent the views of President Bush, the American government, or the American people.”
The apology continued: “Italy is a close friend and ally of the United States, and as anyone who has covered President Bush knows, he holds Prime Minister Berlusconi and the Italian people in the highest regard.”
The often thick, paper-bound briefing book is issued to all members of the White House press corps who travel on international trips. The book usually includes maps, country statistics, transcripts of relevant speeches and interviews and biographies of the leaders President Bush will meet while traveling.
The offending bio included in this edition came from the Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol 25.
Population Growth in Italy
The Italian population grew to almost 60,000,000 last year at an annual increase of 0.8%. All of the increase was due to immigration. As I may have mentioned before, France is the only Western European nation that now has a replacement birthrate of at least 2.0 children per couple.
Intercepted Telephone Conversations
Despite Italian privacy laws, the newspapers often carry intercepted telephone conversations of political leaders. Recently some embarrassing conversations (what else is new?) of Berlusconi were in the press. There was a discussion of the public’s right to know private conversations versus those that concern public matters. One politician argued that the line between public and private was not always clear. What if Bill Clinton had made Monica Lewinsky an official Presidential Aide? Would their conversations then have been public or private?
Berlusconi Doesn’t Only Have Embarrassing Telephone Conversations
He also can ask embarrassing questions as the following shows:
After a week pushing for a change in the law to halt his corruption trial, Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, set his sights even higher at the weekend by demanding the Catholic Church kill off a rule which stops him taking communion because he is divorced and remarried.
Evidently on a roll and wearing a white panama hat, a relaxed-looking Berlusconi sat in the front row at a service in a church near his Sardinian villa on Saturday as the bishop approached the congregation to offer communion.
“When are you going to change this rule that stops me taking communion?” Berlusconi asked the startled bishop, who had been planning to move swiftly past the prime minister without stopping to pop a wafer in his mouth.
The Catholic Church considers a religious marriage unbreakable, as stated in the Bible, meaning Catholics getting a civil divorce cannot then remarry in church, unless an annulment is granted by the church.
Anyone opting instead for a civil wedding second time round can be denied communion, including Berlusconi, who has three children from his second marriage to the actress Veronica Lario.
Until now, the Italian prime minister and media mogul has remained an unwavering supporter of the Vatican’s policy of promoting family values and attacking single-sex unions. Berlusconi showed up at last year’s church-run Family Day demonstration in Rome, prompting critics to joke that he was well qualified to do so since he had so many families of his own.
Earlier this month, after kissing Pope Benedict on the hand at a meeting at the Vatican, Berlusconi said: “We are on the church’s side.” He added: “The outlook of my government cannot but please the Pope and the church.”
College Tuition in Florence
I am not a fan of the Italian universities, but as the following shows, the costs are surely attractive by American standards.
Months of student protests over tuition fees and alleged favoritism at the University of Florence have finally paid off. The university’s dean, August Marinelli, has announced a reduction in tuition fees, in effect this coming academic year.
The base tuition will be reduced across the board, and each student’s fee will be calculated on a sliding scale based on family income. The yearly cost will range from a low of 18 euro to 1718 euro.
The university will also introduce incentives: merit-based reductions and a family reduction for those who have more than one student enrolled. Both will result in a 50 percent discount in fees. Acknowledging that many students work and study at the same time, the university will make the 50 percent merit reduction available to undergraduates who carry between 9 and 30 credits.
University officials also announced a code of ethics designed to address, among other things, nepotism and similar practices.
Italian Problems with English Language
I have often commented that in translating items into English, the Italians often neglect an important final step – having a native speaker look over the translation for final polishing. This problem arose “big time” this year in the Maturita’ test taken by all Italian high school seniors. By the way there were also errors in the questions in Italian on the test.
The chief examiner of Italy’s Maturita’ test has been dismissed over “grave errors” in examination papers, including an English test taken from a Namibian website that critics described as “almost incomprehensible” in places.
Students taking English as part of the Maturita exam were given questions on an unlikely text: an online interview by a Yemeni journalist with the German-born owners of a resort at Swakopmund in Namibia. The text, provided for examiners by the State Tourism Institute, was entitled Feel of Home at Villa Wiese – Swakopmund Namibia, described as a “funky guest lodge”. It omits definite and indefinite articles and inverted commas, uses have when has is needed, spells budgets as budges and has only a passing acquaintance with good style.
“Pity us poor Italians,” said Sergio Perosa, Professor Emeritus of English literature at Venice University. “No wonder so few Italians speak English properly.” The errors were spotted by Jean Woodhouse, a veteran teacher of English in Italy who was formerly private tutor to Marina and Piersilvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister’s children by his first wife.
“If the examiner had been one of my pupils I would have failed him or her,” Miss Woodhouse told Corriere della Sera, which published the exam paper with her acid comments. She said that she had only highlighted “the most glaring” errors and infelicities. “Frankly the text should have been thrown in the wastepaper basket.”
Students were also asked to explain why the desert was “named as” the West Coast Recreational Area, which Miss Woodhouse corrected to “known” or “called”. She also censured the examiner for allowing a sentence beginning with “and” and letting through the tautology “a visit to the Cape Cross Eal Colony is worth a visit” – not to mention failing to spot the missing S in seal.
She was also scathing about a question asking candidates to describe similar places they had visited “using your imagination”, when the places were presumably either real or imagined, but not both. Miss Woodhouse scrawled furiously at the end: Gravamente insufficiente! (“Seriously inadequate!”) Professor Perosa said that the text had been taken off the web unchecked, and as a result the exam was couched in “a kind of pseudo-English, or what was once called pidgin English. Even the average waiter in Venice speaks English more correctly than this.”
Mariastella Gelmini, the Education Minister, said: “I apologize to the students, even though I am not directly responsible for the errors.”