Silvio Berlusconi: More Than You Want to Know

“La Dolce Viagra,” Evgenia Peretz, Vanity Fair

“Basta Bunga Bunga,” Ariel Levy, The New Yorker

Image (“Pasha Berlusconi and His Harem, after François Gabriel Lepaulle”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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IMF and DSK

Dominique Strauss-Kahn or “DSK,” head of the International Monetary Fund, is accused of raping a hotel maid in his $3,000-a-night suite. At last, international finance news we can understand.

Betsy Rothstein rates the scandal coverage:

“IMF Sex Scandal Headline: Who Did it Best?” Betsy Rothstein, FishbowlDC

Courtney Comstock at Business Insider made the real headline find, last month’s French interview with alleged dirty old man Strauss-Kahn:

“Oui, j’aime les femmes, et alors?” ["Yes, I Love Women, So What?"] Antoine Guiral, Libération

The virtual linguist snares a turn of French phrase, DSK described as “a chaud lapin or ‘hot rabbit,’ which evokes quite a different picture to the English equivalents ladies’ man or Don Juan.”

John Ensign Ethics Report: Hot Off the Press

Adulterous Nevada Republican John Ensign resigned his U.S. Senate seat before the Senate Ethics Committee issued a report that would have led to his expulsion. The last time the U.S. Senate expelled a member: 1862.

The Ensign ethics report is out, so add it to your summer reading list. Some may think it’s not a romance novel, but Mr. Ensign’s web of deceit involved a long-term affair with His Neighbor’s Wife (an employee and spouse of an employee), which he covered up with hush money drawn from campaign funds.

Berlusconi Celebrates Mussolini; Gal Pal Cashes In

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi commemorated the work of his predecessor, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, in a ceremony at the Vatican yesterday. Mr. Berlusconi met with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to mark the anniversary of the 1929 Lateran Treaty establishing 109-acre Vatican City within Rome. That’s the same Cardinal Bertone who urged “everyone, especially those who hold a position of public responsibility [...] to commit themselves to a more robust morality, a sense of justice and legality.” The two officials may have shaken hands, and it is unclear whether the Cardinal wiped his off afterwards.

Say It Ain’t So, Sumo

This week’s big story in sports is the sumo wrestling scandal. It’s heavy: sumo wrestlers weigh in at over 300 pounds. The scandal: athletes have been fixing matches for Yakuza gangsters in return for cash payoffs. The repercussions: the grand tournament of Japan’s national sport has been cancelled for the first time since World War II.

Some sumo wrestlers have fixed matches by texting on their cell phones. The fingers of these huge pro athletes are so fat that some use iPads as cell phones.

In other sports news, three Pakistani cricket players have been banned from world play for cheating, and there is some kind of indoor football match in Texas.

Bonus: The Sumo Success Diet.

“Secrets of the sumo wrestler’s diet,” Monami Yui, CNN City Pulse

It’s really not much of a secret. Eat lots of this with big hunks of meat.

Want to know how you’d look as a sumo wrestler? There’s an app for that.

 

Image (“Say It Ain’t So, Sumo, after Utagawa Kuniyoshi”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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Silvio Berlusconi, on TV. As a Critic.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was on television recently. That’s unsurprising since he owns many TV stations and he is (at the moment) Prime Minister. But it was someone else’s station, La 7, and he phoned in to a live show. The program was L’Infedele, a talk show about infidelity, so it’s no surprise that the subject was Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, currently embroiled in a scandal involving sex parties and pay-for-play relations with teenage girls.

Mr. Berlusconi told TV host Gad Lerner that his show is “a whorehouse,” a claim one blogger described as “the pot calling the kettle despicable.”  Mr. Lerner called the PM a buffoon. Here’s a video clip:

Italian — Moroccan Relations

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is being hounded by prosecutors in Milan just because he had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl. Why not? After all, he paid for it. A billionaire media mogul, Berlusconi is a firm believer in free market capitalism, but prostitution is considered terribly unfashionable in Italy. The Berlusconi government even passed strict laws against prostitution, but also another law making the Prime Minister immune from prosecution. Che dilemma!

The courts revoked the immunity law? Ha! Silvio Berlusconi refuses to be questioned by magistrates about prostitution, and refuses to leave office for refusing to testify.

The young lady in question, runaway teen dancer Karima el-Mahroug (aka Karima Keyek), is nicknamed “Ruby Rubacuori,” “Ruby Heart-Stealer.” She must still be a teenager since she’s on Facebook [we pause briefly so you can "Like" her]. Ms. el-Mahroug was born in Morocco, so perhaps her compensation was merely an aspect of Italian foreign aid policy.

Political Celebrity

The documentary about Eliot Spitzer was the hot ticket at Tribeca and the Toronto Film Festival. What does a disgraced moral crusader do after his ethics and sex life become the stuff of jokes, tabloids, books, and movies?

He goes Hollywood. Mr. Spitzer will co-host a show on CNN this fall.

 

Salahi Blackwater Polo Cup?

Is a Polo match produced by famed security-breachers Tareq and Michaele Salahi sponsored by security contractor Blackwater? That’s what the website for the 2010 America’s Cup Polo event claims.

There are reasons to believe this may not be so, since Blackwater has changed its name to U.S. Training, Xe Services, and perhaps other pseudonyms. Blackwater (U.S. Training) has not responded to our inquiry about the polo match. We have heard from several other “sponsors” claimed by the event, and they echo this email:

I am writing in response to your question about the America’s Cup Polo Event. The U.S. Embassy is not a sponsor of this event. We will contact the organizers to correct their website.

Thanks,
Elizabeth Fitzsimmons
Spokesperson
Embassy New Delhi

[Update: The embassy was removed from the ""Partner/Sponsor" page today; not so other known non-sponsors like the Old Town Crier and Washington Flyer Magazine]. 

Tiger Woods Gets a Rise Out of the Stock Market

Disgraced golfer Tiger Woods danced his “heavily-choreographed apology” for adultery on TV and the stock market rose, notes the Wall Street Journal.

While correlation is not causation and past results do not guarantee future performance, this is The Year of the Tiger.

Image (“Tiger Woods’ New Logo”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.