While North Americans have to settle for the tawdry staged dramatics of Jon & Kate Plus 8, Italians have the real thing in the ongoing reality show starring Silvio Berlusconi. Few weeks go by that the gaffe-prone Italian prime minister isn’t at the centre of a controversy of his own making.
In the current episode, the 72-year-old business tycoon is battling allegations that prostitutes attended parties he hosted at his official residences. In an interview with Chi magazine, which he owns, Berlusconi denied he ever paid for sex, which technically wasn’t the charge (his friend, businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini, who’s being investigated for allegedly abetting prostitution, admitted to paying for women to attend, if not to entertain; one of these women claims to have video). ”I’ve never paid a woman,” Berlusconi, the country’s richest man worth some $12 billion, told the magazine indignantly. But Berlusconi couldn’t leave it at that: “I’ve never understood what satisfaction there is other than that of conquering [a woman].”
Voicing such archaic sentiments has landed the politician in l’acqua calda before. Last January, he said that an interior ministry proposal to deploy troops on city streets following a series of savage sexual assaults on women would be impractical: “We would have to send as many soldiers as there are beautiful girls. And I don’t think we would manage.” When he was criticized for appearing insensitive to sexual violence, Berlusconi insisted that his remarks were a “compliment” and noted that “women have to be defended.”
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