A crisis summit? For Silvio Berlusconi, it's a big wonga-wonga party

[marmar]

A crisis summit? For Silvio Berlusconi, it's a big wonga-wonga party
Only one man is immune to the G20 pressure. The leering Italian PM will surely be history's icon of the grotesque mess we're in

Marina Hyde
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011


"Brilliance or buffoonery?" wondered a Times headline of the Greek PM's policy ricochet this week. How about brainmelt, given the unfathomably intense pressure under which George Papandreou has been operating. Reports across the globe predict "nervous breakdown" in the eurozone, in governments, even in individuals. The leaders mime a strange pageant of stagily pointed fingers and decisive hand gestures for the benefit of the cameras, before releasing communiques best paraphrased as "Errrrrrrrrrm...". The hollow-eyed Nicolas Sarkozy now looks hollowed out. Even the previously unflappable-looking Angela Merkel looks ragged. They all appear close to the edge.

Except for one man. Only one man appears to have the temperament to handle this crisis, the Teflon nerves to withstand any amount of pressure. Unfortunately, that man is Silvio Berlusconi.

Watching the Italian prime minister leer and laugh his way through this week's Cannes summit, I'm reminded of the narrator's reflective words in The Big Lebowski: "Sometimes there's a man … Sometimes there's a man – well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there." When historians search for the man who crystallised this age of reckoning, they will surely judge that man to have been Berlusconi. He is uniquely, almost enviably suited to handling crises – and simultaneously a creature whose grotesque buffoonery perfectly encapsulates the mess in which we find ourselves.

Have you been watching him? Just as you can't take your eyes off a bad actor on a stage, and their badness somehow subsumes all the action, so Berlusconi is oddly mesmeric. Where is he now, I wonder of the Italian PM? How much of a plonker is he being now? Frequently, he will oblige me by popping up in the background of footage from the summit, appearing to be making a joke about his pen, or the Chinese. The only time he appeared to realise that a serious demeanour was required was during the red-carpet arrivals ceremony in Cannes on Thursday, but otherwise it has been business as usual. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/04/summit-silvio-berlusconi-wonga-wonga

[monmouth]

1. He and Herman would be best buds in another world...LOL...n/t