Silvio Berlusconi "You are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent,"

Orla K

I'm not one for world politics, more local stuff interest me more but I saw this and I'm shocked I don't even know what I'm thinking and the daddykins bit freaks me out.

I like feminism, I see it as a movement started by women which is now an equal rights for all movement but I didn't think people had to put up with this crap from someone with that much power over a country.

IN TIME, historians are sure to devote much time and space to the figure of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. But could it be that they will attribute to the Italian prime minister the merit of having, however inadvertently, sparked the renaissance of Italian feminism?


The prime minister would appear to have disturbed the slumbering dragon of Italian feminism which, for all that it was radical and outspoken in the Sixties and Seventies, has almost disappeared from the stage of public life in the last 20 years.


Rome daily La Repubblica reported yesterday that more than 98,000 women have signed an online petition deploring the 73-year-old Berlusconi’s “offensive”, male-chauvinist attitudes.


The incident that sparked the protest came, as so often in modern Italian politics, in the context of a TV current affairs programme. Speaking via telephone to RAI 1 talk show Porta A Porta on the evening two weeks ago that the constitutional court stripped him of his immunity from prosecution, the prime minister had an altercation with one of the studio guests, Rosy Bindi (58), the former health minister in Romano Prodi’s government.
“You are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent,” said Berlusconi in a remark Italians immediately understood to be both sarcastic and offensive.


A visibly offended Ms Bindi replied she was not “a woman at your disposal” in an obvious reference to allegations that Berlusconi last winter held orgies involving prostitutes in his private residences in Rome and Sardinia. Last April, Berlusconi’s wife Veronica Lario announced she was seeking a divorce, saying she did not want to live with a man who “consorts with minors”, a reference to the fact that her husband turned up at the 18th birthday party of Neapolitan Noemi Letizia, an aspiring actress/model who refers to Berlusconi as “Papi” (Daddykins).


In an open letter to La Repubblica the day after the programme, three women – Paris-based philosophy professor Michela Marzano, journalist Barbara Spinelli and Columbia University politics lecturer Nadia Urbinati – expressed their indignation about Berlusconi’s treatment of women. “It is by now well evident that a woman’s body has become a major political weapon in the armoury of the prime minister. He sees women as physically seductive, pretty young things, totally submissive to the Big Boss’s will. We protest against this cretinisation of women, of politics and of democracy. This man offends women and democracy. Let’s stop him.”


That open letter has become a petition signed by more than 98,000 women. Could it be that Berlusconi has this time taken on an opponent too imposing, even for him?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/1022/1224257228590.html

metrovelvet

He is such a buffoon. I can only imagine that the Italians keep re electing him because he wants to the borders. Either that or they secretly admire him for it, like some relic from ancient Rome and the age of excess.

IvyTheTerrible

Orla K wrote: »

I'm not one for world politics, more local stuff interest me more but I saw this and I'm shocked I don't even know what I'm thinking and the daddykins bit freaks me out.

I like feminism, I see it as a movement started by women which is now an equal rights for all movement but I didn't think people had to put up with this crap from someone with that much power over a country.



http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/1022/1224257228590.html

That guy is a clown, but he has gotten away with saying lots and lots of really stupid things, he's not going to go down for this:

For example: He complement Barack Obama on his tan. Nice.

Example 2: There has been a big problem of rape in Rome. People have been blaming it on Roma gypsies, leading to violence. Berlusconi's response: he isn't surprised there are so many rapes because Italian woman are so beautiful.

He controls most of the media in Italy so he can say what he wants.

Mr. Presentable

The reason Silvio gets elected despite his neanderthal ideas is that he gets the job done. Or, more precisely, is seen to get the job done.

Take the case of the L'Aquilla earthquake, for example. He dropped everything and went straight out there. He promised to rebuild the town without expense spared. He held the G8 conference in the town this year. This sort of politics is hugely impressive to the voters (who nevertheless recognise his shortcomings).