Interesting how wrong language leads us to wrong sensibilities..
We are told that Silvio Berlusconi’s improprieties were just his “love of women.”
[Berlusconi is in the news for having been caught on audiotape in a sex scandal]
Love of women?
He loved women so little, he publicly humiliated them – his wife of 19 years and the mother of his 3 children, in this case – by telling a topless model he would marry her instantly if he could.
This is a “bad boy”? Boy? This Dionysos is a 71-year old (correction: I read 72, in some accounts) man with a reptilian stare and matching gonads, who ‘bought’ sexual favors from astute “pros” or near underage women with daddy-complexes. If sexual realism suggests that ‘that’s what all men want’ – then sexual realism should tell us that minus his money, all he was was a dried up old creep.
He ‘loved’ one young thing enough to attend her 18th party, but apparently didn’t attend his own children’s 18th birthday parties.
Love?
From appearances, Berlusconi didn’t “love” anything but power and sex.
Adultery, in a marriage where both partners live separately, isn’t the problem. The problem is the public pain and humiliation Berlusconi repeatedly inflicted on his family by his compulsive behavior.
He ‘loved’ his lusts and physical drives. Whether this should be the object of public censure, titillation, or gloating is another thing.
Personally, I think his control of Italian media, his gagging of critical journalists and his bribing his way out of legal charges are things libertarians should be much more concerned with….
Still, casting his behavior as some kind of splendid victim-less frolicking is dubious. He seems to be a lecher and a liar who subjected his wife and children (she wasn’t the first, either) to endless pain.
The New York Times is wrong on a number of things. But they’re not wrong to consider him corrupt – and, “aging Lothario” is putting it very nicely.
Berlusconi is a senile goat.
Paleolibertarians shouldn’t be using him as the centerpiece of a “boys will be boys” argument.
The NY Times notes how both political sides are taking partisan stands in contradiction to their professed principles:
“Things are completely turned upside down,” said Gianluca Nicoletti, a commentator for Il Sole 24 Ore radio. “Those who always represented the family and faithful couples are happy to justify hanky-panky,” he said. While some on the left, “which always professed a belief in total sexual freedom, are now like inquisitors with their fingers wagging.”
That’s where the ideological mind-set gets you…
Lila,
Interesting and dead-on post as far as I’m concerned; your first line is rather timely on my end as I’ve just finished reading Josef Pieper’s “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power”. Pieper makes many of the same points. I would certainly recommend you check it out if you’re not already familiar with the work.
Your point on libertarians holding Berlusconi up as some sort of example is also interesting. I’ve had many an argument with my fellow libertarian friends who love to hold Larry Flint up as a paragon of free speech advocacy. It’s long been my belief that as libertarians, if we are only able to acquire our heroes from the crass, perverted edges of society we will have a very difficult time bringing more minds into the philosophical fold.
Hi Jake –
you’re dead on and I would love to read the book..
I am trying to meet someone down here where I am who’s written a book on neurolinguistics and politics that I think deserves a lot of credit..
I detest Flynt and don’t consider him a hero of anything except for coming out of the right side of a court case..he abused his own children
With the Lew Rockwell folks, I don’t think it’s because of any perversity..they’re nice people and very consistent voices of sanity.
I just think they are rather naive and don’t understand how power operates. They’ve never been on the wrong end of it
That’s the problem with the middle class – it’s never really had a heel ground into its face.
I am middle class myself, but unusual circumstances in my life have let me experience this and so I don’t talk in theories..
I know what the heels feels like
They’ve never met or gone up against a creep like Berlusconi..
I’ll bet you his wife and girlfriends know what he’s like..
He was a hideous human being
For a commenary on Berlusconi’s media monopoly and a piece of hilarious satire, check out the documentary/comedy film “Viva Zapatero”. The intro can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGE-c7g56tI.
should read “commentary”
Thanks Andrew, will post.
My chest bleeds for Berlusconi.
The noble elder is a pioneer in the vast cross-generational rift between geriatric virile men and their scantily clad, well stacked female counterparts. Perhaps we should not judge the book by how much its cover covers, but by the stiff reaction it receives from world leaders.
We receive reports of our world leaders’ job performances daily by the media, but how often do we hear of their extra-marital achievements?
After all, under the table or the sheets is where most policy is bought or imposed.
I applaud Berlusconi for his performance in and out of bed, with young and old, portion of Italian media he does and doesn’t own, models he has “daddied” and/or appointed to cabinet positions, and his appearances in clothed OR nude photos.
Sincerely Yours,
Future Minister of Interior,
Pamela Anderson PhD DD
Ha ha.
I disagree thoroughly, but anyone with the wit to write that very clever post, gets my nod…
You missed my point…
His geriatric gyrations, god bless them, have my approval and doubtless his partners..
But there are ways to do things
and publicly humiliating your family’s isn’t the way to do it..
There are virtues to hypocrisy and convention..
No need to abandon his wife or comment publicly on her.
No need to not visit his children
Sorry – recasting this as “fun and games” doesn’t work.
He is a nasty piece of goods
Everyone does it also doesn’t work.
Everyone isn’t like that.
The near universal worship of money and power in men as the only aphrodisiac is partially at least conditioning..
Biological reductionism isn’t the answer…no matter how attractively portrayed..
We are human beings
Just a quick aside in defense of Larry Flynt — you claimed he “abused his children”, which wikipedia (and my gut instinct) claim is false. “Flynt disowned his eldest daughter, Tonya Flynt-Vega, after she became a Christian anti-pornography activist. In her 1998 book Hustled, she claims that Flynt sexually abused her as a child, often calling her names. Flynt has denied the charges, claiming to have passed a polygraph test and to be in possession of a tape recording of his daughter admitting she made up the accusations for money.”
Have you seen his documentary, “The People vs. Larry Flynt (2005)”? Everything that I’ve heard about him, I like. He definitely did struggle for freedom of expression — against absolutely absurd “obscenity” legislation, not to mention his contribution to the field of sexuality. I’m really not sure what faults you (and Jake) find in the man :\.
Berlusconi, on the other hand, is obviously an evil misogynistic corrupt reptile. There’s something very disturbing in the Italian psyche that props such megalomaniacs.
Hi Denis –
It could be that there’s more to Flynt than I have seen..
On the other hand, my judgment of what he is as a human being stems from his trashing of Jerry Falwell – whose political positions I don’t necessarily support – in terms that I thought were execrable…a nasty satire in which Falwell supposedly has sex with his mother in the bath house.
Nothing funny about degrading another human being like that. Falwell’s encounters with Flynt uniformly raised my opinion of him – he was cheerful, tolerant, and reasonable. Flynt was none of those things.
I judge people by their characters as exhibited consistently over a period of time and taking into account circumstances…
I don’t trash them simply because their economic or political positions don’t coincide with mine.
I admire Nader, Buchanan, Paul and McKinney for on the whole being consistent and brave in their political positions – it doesn’t mean I agree with any of them on everything..
You may be right about Flynt. I don’t know. But what I saw of him I didn’t much care for.
And I have no reason to doubt the credibility of his daughter beyond his word about it.
She could have taken money and he could still be guilty
(I found Flynt’s raunchy satire of Falwell to be very funny and appropriate, although I can understand if others might have different opinions. He wasn’t attacking Falwell directly, so much as his absurd pompous messianic holier-than-thou persona and the oppressive and xenophobic underpinnings of his beliefs — the very same oppressive and xenophobic culture that was trying to silence and sue him. The two had completely and violently opposing views on almost everything — I don’t see how anyone can be “cheerful” and “tolerant” and “reasonable” with someone who so thoroughly undermines one’s values. Moreover, Falwell was not cheerful nor tolerant nor reasonable — he brutally tried to sue Flynt for $45M because of this insignificant work of fiction printed in his own private subscription-based magazine, not to mention the far more insidious repressive venom he would spew to his students (all his draconian Religious anti-sexuality stuff, and twisted anti-free-speech poison). I’m still not sure how the two managed to become friends later in life. (Also, unless there is more credible evidence — why doesn’t Tanya take a polygraph like her dad did? she already wrote a book about it — one can’t simply assume such character-assassinating crimes :b.))
Hi Dennis,
I concur with Lila’s position and would like to add one additional point. As far as I’m concerned modern day Libertarianism (of which I would deem myself to be an advocate) tends to make an enormous philosophical mistake in conflating those actions which one should be free to engage in (which in my mind is any voluntary association) with that which is desirable. I would deem prohibition to be an evil since it denies voluntary action through means of coercion. At the same time however, I would never hold the local drunk up as the paradigm of free action to be emulated and admired by all. To Lila’s point, I wouldn’t send a man like Berlusconi to the scaffold for cheating on his wife (perhaps multiple times in the public eye) but I also would not seek to emulate such a man in my own life. I believe one of the mistakes advocates of modern day Libertarianism make is to hold the bizarre, perverted or extreme up as examples to be admired simply because they buck modern social conventions. It strikes me as a strange paradox that libertarianism, which is founded on absolute moral and ethical principles tends towards a strange sort of relativism with regards to what is ultimately desirable in personal action. Ultimately my issue with holding men like Flynt up as examples is that in my mind (and a I realize this is subjective) there are hundreds if not thousands of better examples who would appeal to a wider audience and better sell the core values of Libertarianism.
Jake, Denis –
these comments are so pertinent, I took them up in my latest post..