Saturday, March 11, 2006

Dictators with a belly and their grandaughters

It is often argued that there's more life in a sicknote than there is in UK politics, where commentators like Andrew Neil have to resort to imaginative ways of flogging a dead horse. Italian or continental politics may be regarded as a right mess, but no doubt they're more, so to speak, colourful. Any looks of interest though ground to a halt the other day when Benito Mussolini's grandaughter Alessandra, for years an MP in the Italian parliament, came up with a disgraceful comment during a television debate with a transvestite challenger.
As bare-faced as usual, she shot her mouth off live on national television by arguing that "it's better to be a fascist than a queer". As we all have a different degree of sensibility, someone should have asked her to start counting the number of people her fascist grandad sent to the deaths between 1921 and 1945 as against any potential victims caused by "queerdom". Italy has a proud history of trade-union and civil rights activism, but with shady pantomimes like Berlusconi and Mrs Mussolini at the helm, it's quite clear that they're in desperate need of a 'proper' conservative party.

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