Even the most cursory reading of Berlusconi's biography very quickly reveals just how ballsy he is. For example, when the judiciary decided to call him out on his almost Olympian levels of criminality, he passed a law immunizing himself from, prosecution while in office. Then he publicly shit-talked prosecutors and judges for years at a time. Everything about him is reminiscent of Boss Tweed of the fabled Tammany Hall, with the important exception that Tweed eventually went to jail.
Of course, none of this prevents him from being a hero, or even mitigates that heroism in the slightest. If, like me, you believe in nothing quite as much as the healing power of poontang, then it naturally follows that you should want portraits of Silvio Belusconi on your money.
These days the former prime minister is most famous for his Bunga Bunga parties, which feature assorted showgirls, a wide range of whores and the occasional teenaged Arab belly dancer. These are reputed to be almost epic Roman orgies, filled to overflowing with the sort of degeneracy that would make Caligula beam with pride.
Berlusconi's single greatest achievement is his understanding of what democracy has become and how he exploited it to his own gain. A media mogul, he would take the hottest girls from his television shows and run them as parliamentary candidates for his People of Freedom party. Understanding that hot and incompetent parliamentarians is always preferable to the homely and incompetent variety, the Italian people made Silvio the longest serving prime minister in Italy's post-war history.
Americans generally, and Republicans in particular, have tended to look down their noses at Italy in recent years. They see it as an entitlement society governed mostly by out-of-control banks and superficially maniacal politicians. This, they assert, has caused Italy to collapse into a heap of moral and financial bankruptcy.
To this I would respond by asking "and this is different from the United States how?" As a matter of fact, the very same Americans who condemn Italy's state are the very same people that created a mirror image of it at home. I know that Republicans like to pretend that the years 2001-'06 didn't exist, but what they did during that period - the tax cuts, the wars, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D - remain the single biggest drivers of American indebtedness. More than anyone else, they created the fiscal Rome that's poised to fall on the rest of the world economy.
If nothing else, at least Berlusconi gave his people a bunch of fantastic tits to look at while he was doing it. While whatever thinking Silvio did during his terms of office was seemingly motivated by his wallet and his groin, George W. Bush wasn't exactly famous for thinking at all.
Democracy has become a ridiculous caricature of responsible governance throughout the Western world. So why shouldn't it at least have the most beautiful jugs, tightest little asses, and wonderfully groomed crotches that we the people can possibly put on it? If you think that either Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or anyone in Congress is substantively better than Berlusconi's parliamentary army of uber-whores, you're not just part of the problem, you are the problem.
Substance was murdered, dismembered and buried and a shallow grave like a forgotten hobo by style during the Kennedy Administration. In the subsequent half century the people have been so manipulated by political consultants, television talking heads and their own abject stupidity that they've taken to believing that style actually is substance. Barack Obama is running entirely on the fact that he's a Horatio Alger character and Mitt Romney's only serious qualification for office is his money and the fact that he's what presidents look like in comic books.
The GSA blowing a few hundred grand in Vegas is what passes for a scandal in modern America, mostly because the people are too lazy and proudly ignorant to realize that the real outrage should come from the policies that everyone agreed about over the last thirty years. Of course, that'll never happen because the people won't bother until it's too late.
The unappreciated genius of Silvio Belusconi is that he recognized what democracy actually is these days, so he stuffed it into a bikini, out it on a trampoline and used it to further his own interests. Americans might laugh at that ... until they remember that their most recent vice-presidential nominee abandoned her office to become a realty TV star while she was still hot enough to profit from doing so.
Nicole Minetti might yet be driven from office in Lombardy. But as the perfect representation of the American Dream, I see no reason why she shouldn't become the next President of the United States. Sure, she's isn't 35 years of age or a born American citizen, but the Constitution hasn't meant all that much for decades now.
She might not be any better than Obama or Romney, but she could hardly be worse. And if nothing else, people might actually start paying attention to their government again, if only to see its nipples get hard.
Pretty much everything here was ruthlessly stolen from the great and good What Would Tyler Durden Do
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