Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Quick hit: Berlusconi was only joking about the rape jokes

While in general I do get a bit down about having John Key as Prime Minister, it's nice to be reminded once in a while that things could be worse:
But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarised state, crimes like rape can happen.

"You can't consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk," he said.

"We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful."
Apparently he made this comments with "levity and good humour" in mind, not sexism and mythology. Well that makes it ok then! /sarcasm

4 comments:

stargazer said...

and here's another view of mr berlusconi's comments, from australia:

http://fuckpoliteness.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/perhaps-we-like-berlusconi-need-a-different-approach/

Julie said...

The thing that really gets to me is how totally and utterly unrepentant he is. He just does not see any problem with what he said. How do we get through to someone like that?

Giovanni Tiso said...

How do we get through to someone like that?

I could think of a couple of ways, but they're illegal.

Still, I'm with Stargazer on the basic premise: whenever I feel down about John Key I think that at least he's not as bad as my 'other' Prime Minister.

The sexism chapter alone on Berlusconi is worth a few pennies. What about that time he made a pass to the Finnish prime minister? Or the time he gave a neck massage to Angela Merkel? Or when he made Mara "calendar girl" Garfagna minister of the republic? It's the PM that keeps on giving.

Anonymous said...

My coworker in the Gender Unit of a UN mission was a fabulous Italian feminist who also had some (illegal) ideas about how to get through to Berlusconi... But yes, these stories do make me realise that things could be much worse than they are here, and that's a good thing to be reminded sometimes.