Call him a hopeless romantic, but the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, says he’s not worried about his 29th trial to face charges of prostitution.
Mr. Berlusconi, 74, was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges that he paid for sex with an underage prostitute and then abused his power by convincing the Milan police to spring her from detention in an unrelated theft charge. The second charge is far more serious, with a potential penalty of 12 years in prison (the prostitution charge would carry a three-year sentence…because, well, a guy has needs I guess).
This trial might be the one that brings down the Italian PM and I have a feeling he wants to be caught and held accountable. Italy has let him get away with basically anything and he has 28 trials to prove it. It’s a little like Bob from The Outsiders. He just needed his parents to care, to enforce some boundaries, to belt him once in a while when he came home drunk. But they didn’t and look what happened—Johnny-cake stabs him with a switchblade for he and Ponyboy to live in an abandoned church that catches fire and collapses on Johnny as he saves a bunch of kids leaving him paralyzed and eventually dead.
Will Berlusconi suffer such a fate? Doubtful. Even if he does get jail time he’ll get multimillionaire Italian politician jail time which I picture as being like what they got in Goodfellas. Pauly cutting the garlic with a razor blade, Henry shaking down the guards in order to slip his salami through, Frankie cooking the sauce into which he puts too many onions, “hey Frankie, how many onions you put in the sauce?” “I put only three onions, only three.” “Frankie that’s too many onions,” and so on.
He used to cut 'em so thin the garlic would liquify in the pan
I love Italy but this is just one of those things that I wave my hand at (an Italian gesture signifying disgust). Berlusconi, the Roman Empire fell and I think it’s your time too.
