Berlusconi awakens sleeping dragon of Italian feminism
source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/1022/1224257228590.html?via=mr
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IN TIME, historians are sure to devote much time and space to the figure of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. But could it be that they will attribute to the Italian prime minister the merit of having, however inadvertently, sparked the renaissance of Italian feminism?
The prime minister would appear to have disturbed the slumbering dragon of Italian feminism which, for all that it was radical and outspoken in the Sixties and Seventies, has almost disappeared from the stage of public life in the last 20 years.
Rome daily La Repubblica reported yesterday that more than 98,000 women have signed an online petition deploring the 73-year-old Berlusconi’s “offensive”, male-chauvinist attitudes.
The incident that sparked the protest came, as so often in modern Italian politics, in the context of a TV current affairs programme. Speaking via telephone to RAI 1 talk show Porta A Porta on the evening two weeks ago that the constitutional court stripped him of his immunity from prosecution, the prime minister had an altercation with one of the studio guests, Rosy Bindi (58), the former health minister in Romano Prodi’s government.
“You are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent,” said Berlusconi in a remark Italians immediately understood to be both sarcastic and offensive.
A visibly offended Ms Bindi replied she was not “a woman at your disposal” in an obvious reference to allegations that Berlusconi last winter held orgies involving prostitutes in his private residences in Rome and Sardinia. Last April, Berlusconi’s wife Veronica Lario announced she was seeking a divorce, saying she did not want to live with a man who “consorts with minors”, a reference to the fact that her husband turned up at the 18th birthday party of Neapolitan Noemi Letizia, an aspiring actress/model who refers to Berlusconi as “Papi” (Daddykins)...
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The prime minister would appear to have disturbed the slumbering dragon of Italian feminism which, for all that it was radical and outspoken in the Sixties and Seventies, has almost disappeared from the stage of public life in the last 20 years.
Rome daily La Repubblica reported yesterday that more than 98,000 women have signed an online petition deploring the 73-year-old Berlusconi’s “offensive”, male-chauvinist attitudes.
The incident that sparked the protest came, as so often in modern Italian politics, in the context of a TV current affairs programme. Speaking via telephone to RAI 1 talk show Porta A Porta on the evening two weeks ago that the constitutional court stripped him of his immunity from prosecution, the prime minister had an altercation with one of the studio guests, Rosy Bindi (58), the former health minister in Romano Prodi’s government.
“You are increasingly more beautiful than you are intelligent,” said Berlusconi in a remark Italians immediately understood to be both sarcastic and offensive.
A visibly offended Ms Bindi replied she was not “a woman at your disposal” in an obvious reference to allegations that Berlusconi last winter held orgies involving prostitutes in his private residences in Rome and Sardinia. Last April, Berlusconi’s wife Veronica Lario announced she was seeking a divorce, saying she did not want to live with a man who “consorts with minors”, a reference to the fact that her husband turned up at the 18th birthday party of Neapolitan Noemi Letizia, an aspiring actress/model who refers to Berlusconi as “Papi” (Daddykins)...
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