Back - By Popular Demand

Italians - and surely that would mean mostly male Italians - must have a truly robust sense of humour.  Italian men do have a (well-deserved) reputation as sexist oafs.  Their respect for women is highlighted in the manner in which they loudly express verbal appreciation in the most crude terms for the female form.  Whistles and catcalls, rude invitations and crude gestures chorus from construction sites when women pass by.

They mean no harm, it is their homespun way of informing women how much virile men appreciate their bodily beauty.  It is not meant as an insult to women.  Rather, its purpose is to entertain, both the men who respond to what their eyes appreciate, and the women who must surely, the men reason, treasure the fact that men find them appealing.

And so, this is the general social atmosphere that seems to prevail.  Another focus on women in a staunchly Roman Catholic society such as Italy where manly virtues include groping and other unsought-for-and-unwanted symptoms of the male love of the female form is that abortions are not thought of as necessary nor the least bit beneficial to society.

All that said, it's a long haul to a prime minister who enjoys casual sex so much that he was prepared to abandon the security of a sound marriage because of his promiscuous nature and his infidelity.  Both of which his long-suffering wife was aware of, and managed to handle, but finally decided she'd absorbed enough abuse when he chased after young women and prostitutes in a very public arena.

All the enthusiastic newspaper reports about the gambolling grandfatherly figure with the rollicking sense of humour and the bawdy laugh using his vast fortune to throw sex-infused parties for his colleagues seemed to do little to damage his authority with the Italian public.  He was, after all, elected on several occasions.

And it wasn't just his rapacious sex appetite and his lack of esteem for his marriage vows and the feelings of his wife and his daughters that made him such an international laughingstock, but the fact as well that under Italian law this media baron was accused of criminal acts that brought shame to his office.  But which office protected him from prosecution.

The revelations that titillated the Italian public and offended the sense of moral integrity among other Italians, while shocking the international community at the utter lack of sensibility of a world figure only brought him further notoriety.  Silvio Berlusconi appeared to feel it was all in good fun.  And a lot of Italian voters agreed with him, that boys will be boys no matter how aged and portly.

After countless women engaged in the sex trade revealed the paid frolics they had entertained the Prime Minister and his cohorts with through countless orgies, his star eventually did dim.  He was forced from office, defeated at the polls, and none too soon.  Still, the financial slump that Italy is facing, and the inability of the technocratic prime minister that succeeded Mr. Berlusconi to settle the country's economy makes people nostalgic for the past.

Italian newspapers are happily speculating now on the possible return to politics of their bad-boy former prime minister.  "Many people ask ... Berlusconi to run for election.  I am among them.  If he decides to do so, we will all be by his side", writes Angelino Alfano, head of the Peoples of Liberty party.