Striking When the Fire Is Hot

Although most people know Italy as the home of pizzas, pasta, and brigandism, it is a little known fact that it also hosts an extensive range of newspapers. It was in this knowledge, at least, that I ventured into a local petrol station in the hope of buying some of the choice selection. However, as a gnarly-knuckled local informed me, the newspaper journalists of Italy went on strike on Saturday, for reasons that some cynics have attributed to their convenient unwillingness to work over the weekend. Indeed, it is suspicious that when they do strike, it tends to be on weekends, when they manifest their discontent over the particular issue at hand by going on picnics, instead of picketing their own offices on cold, windy Tuesday mornings.
Anyway, it is certainly true that Italian hacks are among the laziest in the world and are rarely enthusiastic about the idea of leaving the confines of their own office space. Yet, in bold blacklegging mode, a newspaper nominally owned by Silvio Berlusconi's brother, Il Giornale, went to the presses, leaving the news-hungry with no choice but to invest in its contents. Now, the name, "The Newspaper", is perhaps overly truistic for some tastes, but it only takes a plunge into its murky depths to realise that there is indeed little newspaperly about it.
But before entering into the merits of one select article from Sunday's edition, some background should be given.
Il Giornale first appeared in 1974 with Indro Montanelli as its editor. Montanelli was, by all accounts, accorded absolute editorial freedom until 1994, the year that Berlusconi threw his hat into the political ring. Once Montanelli had refused to endorse Berlusconi's Citizen Kane-style ascent to political power, it was curtains for him.
Interestingly, another controversial figure took charge at the paper in the period of the lunatic Northern League's unhappy spurt of popularity. Vittorio Feltri, erstwhile editor of L'Indipendente, was and is a journalist whose sensibilities were tuned to the Fox News style of reporting a full decade before that station came to prominence. Under his tenure, the newspaper was perversely turned into a print soapbox for the shrill brand of dementia embodied in promised secessionist, Umberto Bossi. Though Feltri has since moved on to a vastly more offensive publication (Libero, which like In-Nazzjon is sadly unavailable on the Internet), he left his mark on Il Giornale. In fitting with its fundamentally fascist matrix, Il Giornale, whose title even suggests an air of government-approved bulletin over the objective subjectivism of other "red" rags, is little more than agitprop of the most vulgar quality. Anyone interested in knowing what this looks like when written in English should invest (sic) in a biography of Mussolini by Nicholas Farrell, an occasional contributor to Libero and unashamed fascist apologist.
For those interested in what it looks like in Italian should visit Il Giornale itself, whose blacklegging issue featured a standard exemplar of the type of bottomless hypocrisy that informs Italian politics of all hues (though mostly right-wing, at this given moment). It is hard to provide a coherent précis for the soap opera that is Italian politics, but ... some days ago, a violent anti-capitalist protest took place in Milan in which several businesses were vandalised. Predictably, this incident has taken on political qualities, with the right's plangent insistence that the parliamentary left was somehow instrumental in these happenings, as well as the isolated incidents of baby-eating of war-time Ukraine, which the historically minded will recall had then been snatched from the COMMUNIST Russians by the benevolent, and so on so forth.
As veteran observers of the Maltese political scene will also remember, nothing melts as many hearts as grand Walesa-style professions of solidarity(TM). As a result, while one lot is solidarising (this word, that I thought I had fashioned from Romance equivalents, gets 182 google results) with the oppressed Iraqis, some other people are busy doing the same for oppressed Milanese merchants. As a result of the one-upmanship that this sort of political contest involves, Il Giornale's febrile propaganda crew have heaved out this trite bit of electioneering, which rings with sweet irony as Berlusconi recovers from the politically expedient "back pains" exacerbated by his raucous speech at this weekend's Confindustria, Chamber of Commerce to you and me, meeting:

"Quel corteo era sacrosanto, come lo erano le ragioni che lo hanno ispirato. La prima è nel fatto che i commercianti, i quali aprono le vetrine sulla strada, sono i più esposti alla violenza, dalla quale vanno protetti. E hanno imparato che esistono gruppi di teppisti politici i quali hanno come fine quello di turbare la vita delle città: perché questo è il segno della loro esistenza, e di un potere sul territorio da affermare ogni tanto e con ogni mezzo."

Yes indeed readers, Mamma Mia, as the Italians love to say. It looks like democracy is not only under attack from Muslamic Nazimentalists and Blafrican refugistas, but also from the vanguardist wing of the anarchic crypto-democratic-Maoist-Bakuninite phalange led by Romano Prodi, a man whose inspires pity, rather than just inspiring.
On a personal note, I should add that the stroke-like feelings induced by the provocative qualities of Italian journalism are marginally inferior to caused by Maltese newspapers. So it looks like this is still going to be a restful holiday