Get out of here

Silvio, you're a saddo. Now just go away!

Barbara Ellen
The Observer, Sunday 7 June 2009

For legal reasons, the Observer is unable to show you photographs taken of a party held by the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, at the now notorious Villa Certosa in Sardinia. I will now give you a moment to count your blessings.

The photos, which appeared in Spanish newspaper, El País, reportedly depict a party for a Czech delegation involving Berlusconi, topless women, and, it is alleged, a naked man leaning over a swimming pool in "a state of arousal". Former Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek has confirmed he appears in the photograph, but says: "It has been modified and the picture is not authentic." Does anyone see any reason to disbelieve him?

For his part, Berlusconi, already under investigation for using state aircraft to fly scantily clad guests around, already in trouble for the 18-year-olds, the endless parade of "friends in thongs" (etc, etc), is suing El País, claiming the photos invaded his privacy and discredited him on the eve of the European parliamentary election. Truth is, whatever happens with Italian voters this weekend, isn't it time for the rest of us to cry: "Give it up, Silvio, dirty goat of European politics, the world has had enough"?

Please understand, this isn't knee-jerk outrage - if anything, the impulse has always been to find Berlusconi pathetic, yes, but also good value, a talking point. It was especially funny when the Blairs went over for that infamous villa freebie, sucking up to their dear chum Silvio, looking a fine figure of a man in his bandana or a dead ringer for Carlos Santana's gran, whichever way you chose to look at it.

This seems to have been Berlusconi's main selling point, with Italians, and others, that he was some kind of superannuated "lovable rogue", a true character who would never allow himself to be diluted by anything so pedestrian as political correctness. Even the codenames he gave himself for the villa parties ("Daddy", "Papi") hinted that here was a man concerned only with a benevolent style of "dictatorship".

However, when you think about it, what exactly is so lovable about a rich, powerful older man surrounding himself with half-naked girls? Where is the real sense of character in all this narcissism? Indeed, just as the married roué in the pub who flirts non-stop is funny at first, as time goes on, this sort of thing gets wearing, annoying and really rather creepy.

Like it or not, "sexual continence as a political issue" did not expire along with Bill Clinton's presidency. After all, the Italian PM is one of our most powerful European dignitaries, someone with enough influence to start or stop wars; is it too much to ask if every time you clap eyes on him the Benny Hill theme music doesn't instantly pipe up in your head? Too much to hope that the villa where he spends his "downtime" doesn't compete with the Playboy mansion for "Most pathetically cliched, middle-aged, sexual fun park"? There you go; if nothing else, Berlusconi is guilty of making Bacchanalian excess look sad.

Enough is surely enough? It's as if everything that could go wrong with a middle-aged white guy has gone wrong with Berlusconi. He's become grubby; a walking midlife crisis in Vilebrequin beach shorts. And he's 72! To which some might cry, well, good on him. Where's the harm? But I would argue there is plenty wrong, just as there was with the Clinton-Lewinsky episode. For, in this context, what appears to be a show of virility and potency is arguably a complete lack of control, not to mention a sense of omnipotence, of shocking contempt for people they believe to be beneath them.

This is why Berlusconi should finally go - not because "he can't keep it in his pants", but because, just like Bill, he can't be bothered to, and clearly does not regard himself in any shape or form answerable to the "minions" who voted for him. In this way, Berlusconi has become the personification of power gone rancid. Indeed, you think we've got it bad with Brown - look over to Sardinia and reflect on what some countries are lumbered with.

As for Berlusconi, perhaps it would be best all around if, at some point in the European elections, he were to be quietly injected with bromide and dragged discreetly to one side. In political and libidinal terms it could be viewed as a mercy killing.