16 year resident in Italy questions the truth behind the Italians' 'Quality of Life' providing an irreverent insider's view of Life in Italy.
Sex, Lies and Dvds
Posted 10-30-2009 at 03:00 PM by burntbythetuscansun
History has just been made: An Italian politician just went down for his sexual picadillos, in what is a very first for this country. I mean, we’re talking about the place that gave us Caligula, Popes with 17 kids, Caesar & Cleopatra and then Marc Antony & Cleopatra, and Emperors gifting sumptuous villas for their (very open) mistresses. It was the Italians who remarked upon seeing photos of Gary Hart on the ‘Monkey Business’ with a pretty blonde (who was not his wife), that he most likely would have lost his candidacy if he’d been on the Monkey Business and not tried something. And so, catching Marazzo, the President of Rome’s great Lazio region with his pants down and taking the fall? This is nothing short of monumental.
Has Italy suddenly become prudish? Not if you count the numbers of men (and women) who back Berlusconi’s affairs as a sign of his ‘virility’. No, with all the drama of an Italian tragic opera, it wasn’t one of your plain vanilla puritan American affairs; getting caught sleeping around, or paying for escorts, or getting a b.j. in the oval office, or even chasing pages (these transgressions don’t even cause blips on the radar screen). He was caught – on tape – shacking up with transvestites. But that’s only the QuickRead version of the story. It grows more complex by the minute:
What started out as his ‘personal weakness’ for the likes of (illegal immigrants) Natalí and Brenda, later involved four Carabinieri policemen who filmed him in the act (for whom?, one might ask). He tried offering them hush money. The film supposedly ends up, however, in the hands of one of the huge media outlets – who warns him about it, rather than publishing it. That person is also the Head of State, Berlusconi. Speaking of Prime Ministers, the building is the same one in which Aldo Moro was famously imprisoned before being murdered. The same neighborhood where Italy's Secret Service purportedly own 22 other apartments (begging the question...did they murder Moro?). Or, did the Carabinieri have ties to Rome's local mafia, the Casalesi and is it true, they have other hot videos (involving other ex-Ministers)?
As the climax of Marazzo’s personal and professional life is spent as fast as a man after well, climax, he's taken a leave of absence from his job. Unfortunately, just when Berlusconi’s men are maintaining a public campaign to halt absenteeism for false maladies – Marazzo goes home and gets a note from the doctor. The opposition cries foul, and presses for new elections – surely to win.
And, speaking of Berlusconi, the spotlight's now off the uncannily quiet Berlusca and his escorts, and shining brightly on the left, where the dirt is so murky, his own affairs pale by comparison. Hmmmmm...those accusations now seem like fun foreplay when set against the after-glow of Marazzo's transvestite trysts.
Shakespeare set his plays in Italy, for all the intrigue and fascination the place obviously held even back in his day. But Shakespeare, if he were alive today, could never have predicted such a convoluted unfolding of events.
As for me, since the days of seeing Gary Hart's Presidential campaign go impotent, up to John Edwards' premature ejection from public life, I still can’t figure out for the life of me, why public figures don’t keep their privates private – at least for the time they’re occupying a public office.
Has Italy suddenly become prudish? Not if you count the numbers of men (and women) who back Berlusconi’s affairs as a sign of his ‘virility’. No, with all the drama of an Italian tragic opera, it wasn’t one of your plain vanilla puritan American affairs; getting caught sleeping around, or paying for escorts, or getting a b.j. in the oval office, or even chasing pages (these transgressions don’t even cause blips on the radar screen). He was caught – on tape – shacking up with transvestites. But that’s only the QuickRead version of the story. It grows more complex by the minute:
What started out as his ‘personal weakness’ for the likes of (illegal immigrants) Natalí and Brenda, later involved four Carabinieri policemen who filmed him in the act (for whom?, one might ask). He tried offering them hush money. The film supposedly ends up, however, in the hands of one of the huge media outlets – who warns him about it, rather than publishing it. That person is also the Head of State, Berlusconi. Speaking of Prime Ministers, the building is the same one in which Aldo Moro was famously imprisoned before being murdered. The same neighborhood where Italy's Secret Service purportedly own 22 other apartments (begging the question...did they murder Moro?). Or, did the Carabinieri have ties to Rome's local mafia, the Casalesi and is it true, they have other hot videos (involving other ex-Ministers)?
As the climax of Marazzo’s personal and professional life is spent as fast as a man after well, climax, he's taken a leave of absence from his job. Unfortunately, just when Berlusconi’s men are maintaining a public campaign to halt absenteeism for false maladies – Marazzo goes home and gets a note from the doctor. The opposition cries foul, and presses for new elections – surely to win.
And, speaking of Berlusconi, the spotlight's now off the uncannily quiet Berlusca and his escorts, and shining brightly on the left, where the dirt is so murky, his own affairs pale by comparison. Hmmmmm...those accusations now seem like fun foreplay when set against the after-glow of Marazzo's transvestite trysts.
Shakespeare set his plays in Italy, for all the intrigue and fascination the place obviously held even back in his day. But Shakespeare, if he were alive today, could never have predicted such a convoluted unfolding of events.
As for me, since the days of seeing Gary Hart's Presidential campaign go impotent, up to John Edwards' premature ejection from public life, I still can’t figure out for the life of me, why public figures don’t keep their privates private – at least for the time they’re occupying a public office.
Total Comments 4
Comments
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Well Burnt
I just arrived in Italy and I heard about the Marazzo video. Besides him being with transvestites there was also 3 stripes of coacaine in the video and cash. Anyway here is also another blog that explains about the Marazzo 'affair'
Marrazzo: Italy's Latest Trans Sex ScandalPosted 11-04-2009 at 02:34 PM by admin
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Grazie! Many people - me included - believe that we should leave politicians' piccadillos well enough alone. And, in the case of Berlusconi, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and a host of others, I'd say - right on.
But, when it comes to people who make the laws illegally paying for sex, using illegal drugs, 'associazione a delinquere' through the services of illegal immigrants, well, it's open season in my book.
Funny though, that it's usually women who get ousted out of office (in the USA) when the nanny or gardner is an illegal immigrant...Posted 11-04-2009 at 08:07 PM by burntbythetuscansun -
Well You might recall the Mele case a couple of years ago ( see below ) - Yes Clinton will not make a case in Italy - The people who lost their job in Italy went a lot further - see the Mele case ( from the right wing ) and the Marazzo case ( from the left wing ) -
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2169777.ece
MP quits party of family values after prostitute takes overdose in hotel room
Richard Owen in Rome
Recommend?
A married Roman Catholic politician whose party has espoused family values and is pressing for all Italian MPs to take drug tests was exposed yesterday after a prostitute took an overdose of cocaine in his hotel room.
Cosimo Mele, 50, a parliamentary deputy for Italy’s Christian Democratic UDC party, resigned from the party after colleagues complained that his behaviour was incompatible with the Centre Right’s espousal of family values. The timing of the dismissal was particularly sensitive as the party has been at the forefront of a campaign to oblige all parliamentarians to take a voluntary drugs test. This is due to take place tomorrow.
Mr Mele, whose wife is about to give birth to their fourth child, said that he felt proud to have risked exposure by calling the emergency services when the girl began hyperventilating and experiencing delirium and hallucinations. “At least I avoided the worst – for her,” he said. Mr Mele, who comes from Brindisi, in staunchly Catholic southern Italy, claimed he had not realised that the girl was a prostitute.
During a recess in an evening vote in the lower house, he had gone for dinner with friends at a fashionable restaurant near the French Embassy on Piazza Farnese, and had struck up a “sympathetic rapport” with a woman in her late twenties to whom he was introduced.
The MP said he had been flattered by her interest. “I am not exactly the kind of man women seek out with a lantern,” he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily. He said that “one thing led to another” and they ended up in bed in a suite at the Hotel Flora on Via Veneto, which features in Fellini’s 1960 classic film La Dolce Vita. .
Asked if he had paid the girl for sex, Mr Mele replied: “Not exactly. I spontaneously gave her a present.” Pressed further, he admitted that the present had been a sum in cash, “though not excessive”.Posted 11-05-2009 at 02:11 PM by paolo - Oh yeah -- I forgot about that! So, when are politicians - everywhere - going to stop pretending that they don't get a little on the side?? Ridiculous.Posted 11-05-2009 at 05:44 PM by burntbythetuscansun
