Inking Italy

In Italy, Even the Mafia and Media Work Together

I got a glimpse this morning of the cozy fascinating relationship in Italy between the media... and the mafia. And I hadn't even had coffee yet.

Here's why:

In case you can't tell, and I know it's hard to, this is a long list of published names. They're people who wrote in as part of a petition against Roberto Saviano -- you know, the guy who's currently risking his life to speak out against mafia infiltration in Italy and who authored Gomorrah. Yes, you read that right. They're against him.

Why? Because he made the mistake of saying, on the popular new television show Viene Via Con Me, that the mafia has infiltrated northern Italy. And that high-ranking politicians, including those in the ostensibly anti-mafia Lega Nord, are in on the whole game. These signers* say that he's wrong. (That's despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, including facts and figures gathered by the DIA, Italy's official anti-mafia organization).

*As the article linked to above points out, the petition can be "signed" by e-mail, text or fax -- so who knows who exactly is behind the names.

What's fascinating to me isn't so much that the mafia's (almost) as pervasive in northern Italy as it is in the south, or that politicians are involved. (I'm surprised that surprises anyone, except for the most anti-southern and myopic northern Italians). It's that you would see a major national newspaper in Italy getting up in arms about somebody actually having the guts to say this. And calling for a petition against him.

Then again, it's Il Giornale. And if you flip to the back page , you see why that's important.

If you don't have eagle-eye vision, let me spell it out for you: Il Giornale is published in Milan, which happens to be both the major (mafia?) hub in the north... and the hometown of the Berlusconis. Not only that, but some of the names are pretty interesting. At the top, there is, of course, Vittorio Feltri, the paper's editor and such a longtime loyalist to Berlusconi that when he recently told a rival paper that Berlusconi "didn’t do a lot of things that he should have done," it was seen as such a sign of change that the New York Times used it as an example of how Berlusconi's allies are defecting.

Listed under consiglieri, meanwhile, are personalities like Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset and the guy behind the quote "If Berlusconi had not entered politics, today we would all be in jail or under some bridge." And then there are the Berlusconis themselves, three of them: Paolo (Silvio's brother) and his two daughters, Alessia and Luna.

But none of this should surprise you, really. After all, Il Giornale was owned by Silvio Berlusconi until 1994, when he sold it to his brother.

And you know who really doesn't like hearing crap about his hometown of Milan... or bad things about his politician buddies in the Lega Nord or elsewhere... or anything at all about his own enthusiastic involvement in inability to root out corruption in Italy?

Yep. That'd be the prime minister.

See, I told you it would be interesting.

In Italy, the Calculus of Completing Tasks

People sometimes wonder why it takes so long to do anything here in Italy.

Luckily (?), I have an example so recent, it's from today.

I had to go to the questura, or police station, today to file a denuncia. I'd lost my copy of my permesso di soggiorno (and no, I don't need to be reminded how stupid that was), and had to fill out a form declaring it had been lost. In lots of countries, that would be a relatively quick procedure.

Not in Italy.

(Scroll right to the bottom if, unlike me, you haven't already wasted lots of minutes today and don't want to waste any by reading a blog post about wasting minutes. That's where you'll find the simple numbers involved in What It Takes To Get Something Done In Italy).

Chasing Your Tail, in Italy and Beyond

When in the questura for a(nother) permesso di soggiorno today, the Italian friend who brought me there brought up a well-known Italian saying.

"Il gatto che si mangia la coda," he said -- the cat that eats its tail.

There couldn't have been a more appropriate place to teach me the phrase. I was telling him how I'd been told that I needed the assicurazione proving I'd paid into the health system to get my new permesso. But before, I'd needed to show a visa to get the assicurazione. And I'd been told that if I had a permesso, I didn't need a visa. So how was I supposed to get a new assicurazione?*

But the feeling of chasing one's tail is hardly unique to Italy. Below, three great examples of "il gatto che si mangia la coda" -- dispatches from France, the U.K., and the U.S. Any good ones I'm missing?

*Unless I misunderstood the whole thing. With systems this complicated, also entirely possible.

France

A friend of mine recently moved to Paris. To rent an apartment, she said, you need to have a bank account first. To open a bank account, you need to have an apartment contract and a visa. And for the visa, you need an apartment contract.

Hahhahahaha.

Also, even merely writing that confused the me out hell of. Meh? 

Using Old Rome for New Events...the Debate Continues

Just days after my own ruminations about how Rome tries to incorporate its ancient past into modern events, a spate of stories have highlighted the danger in doing so.

A Reuters story published today writes about how Legambiente, a national environmental group, is protesting Rome's use of the Villa Borghese, the lovely, historic park that's been used for concerts, festivals, and to host viewings of the World Cup. They say the trash and graffiti left behind is destroying the park, never mind the wear and tear of thousands of people -- and the big, heavy setups that such concerts and events usually require -- on the park's delicate gardens and 17th-century statues. I can't imagine they're wrong.

And the Associated Press writes about how vandals are destroying Rome, leaving anti-pope graffiti on the Scala Santa, knocking noses off of statues in the Protestant Cemetery, and dyeing the Trevi Fountain.

These issues are, of course, just the tip of the iceberg in a city where keeping up so many historic structures would be hard and costly enough even without thousands of people trampling through them. And so the question remains: Is it better to open up Rome's sites to modern use, or focus on preservation and conservation? And can they go hand in hand?

Examples of other recent events that stress sensitive sites -- but highlight them, too -- include:

Summer jazz concerts in Villa Celimontana, a 16th-century park strewn with ancient ruins

The swimming pool and resort on the top of the Celian hill, archaeologically sensitive for its ancient ruins and medieval churches

Summer opera in the ancient Baths of Caracalla

And the list goes on...

Of Color, In Italy

There's a flip side to the Italians' tendency to see someone with similar coloring and a many-voweled last name as one of their own: what happens when you don't fit that mold.

Read my mini-impression of a very, very big issue (in Italy, as elsewhere) in the American magazine, here.

How to Change an Italian Lightbulb

It's like one of those old jokes: How many Italians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

But that's not even the right question. The right question would be, How many hours does it take to screw in a lightbulb in Italy?

My answer, as I discovered this morning: At least two.*

That's right. You thought it was easy to change a lightbulb? So did I.

Let me explain. In the bathroom of my otherwise-lovely, rented apartment in Rome, there is one good light source. Unfortunately, this light source comes from this oddly-shaped, and, as I discovered, all-but-impenetrable light on the upper wall shown, in all its attractive egg-shaped glory, here on the right.  

When the light went out, though, I thought: No problem. I already have my trusty Ikea set of screwdrivers. I'll just unscrew the sucker, figure out what kind of lightbulb is underneath it, and replace it.

In this cutely simplified kind of thinking, I forgot one crucial fact: I live in Italy now. This means that even the simplest tasks -- like, for example, screwing in a lightbulb -- are difficult.**

Dear Rome: Please Stop Embarrassing Me

We were getting along so well. What happened?

Read more at The American magazine.