My Dog Had An Uri Can The Cat Catch It

Berlusconi, mirror the country's worst

I do not see TV for many years. But thanks to video posted online, I was able to assess the extent of the irruption of the great Cayman in the transmission of Gad Lerner. To whom I express solidarity and admiration for the lesson of nobility, so angry quanto composta, che ha dato al volgare parvenu che si crede dio. Solo se si è ciechi, sordi e insensati si può non comprendere che in quella incursione è concentrato tutto il senso del berlusconismo, la sua patologia psicologica e comportamentale, ancor prima che politica. Ormai Papi ha perso la testa: è in preda a un delirio di onnipotenza che confligge con l’ancor vaga percezione della decadenza e della fine.

E’ questa percezione indistinta che lo induce alla furia compulsiva con cui, feticisticamente, consuma corpi e immagini femminili nelle notti di Arcore allietate da ospiti prezzolate, nel tentativo vano di esorcizzare la vecchiaia, l’impotenza, la perdita di potere. Ma, quanto più questa percezione is making inroads into the subconscious, the more he reacts with gestures worthy of a despot mediocre and vulgar: from Banana Republic, as has been said too many times with an inappropriate metaphor. Even the crude Ben Ali-forced by popular revolt in a stampede and dishonorable, however, unable to resist the temptation to take behind the counter like any villain-appears more composed of the Caiman. Which food inedible and threat, blackmail and screaming with style worthy of brush salesman what it was.

The raid in "The Unfaithful", I said, is the entire meaning of the Berlusconi phenomenon. First, the concept of ownership not only of policy but of any kind, whether corporeal or incorporeal, he thinks it is within his reach: the republican institutions, the Allies, the judiciary, law enforcement, communication, the electorate, women's bodies and minds ... example is the order This Mortal Coil turned MEP to abandon the "incredible brothel television." The inventor of television imperial brothels and bordellos, the corrupter of minors and magistrates, is convinced that the parliamentarians of the majority, especially women, are things of its own. Everything belongs to him, everything must be placed at his service. And when something or someone beyond its domain, it puts to scream like a child who was removed from the cookie jar who tried to steal.

This mixture of despotism, subversion, manic sexism, indifference, ignorance of the foundations of history, democracy, the republican institutions (have never read the Constitution?) Is not - as I said - a phenomenon exotic banana republic, or holds the overused metaphor of the "Sultanate". Like it or not, Berlusconi is the mirror of the country. And 'the precipitate perverse, translated into the language of the modern society of the spectacle and neo-liberalism, dell'Italietta who has never really come to terms with the legacy of fascism and culture of indifference, that illusion of control processes of modernization and globalization with the old tricks of individualism and cynicism, and the delegate of the to their own interests at one end or copings. And 'this, together with the weakness of the opposition suicide, which explains why the twilight of the despot is not only grotesque but Italy as a whole still does not inspire riots in the streets. On the other hand, we're not in Tunisia ...

Annamaria Rivera - Professor of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, University of Bari - 26/01/2011 Liberation