As IF Times

link The Caligulan court of Silvio Berlusconi laid bare – Telegraph.

On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about this guy being influenced by graft.  Regarded as one of the richest men in Italy, Berlusconi is presumably paying for all of this ‘amusement’ from his own pockets.  Usually, the politician is caught diverting the public’s  funds for personal gain.  Dictators like Yasser Arafat, Ferdinand Marcos and the recently deposed Zine Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia come to mind.   All of these statesmen made off with billions of dollars of their citizen’s money and lived in relative dignity, right until the jig was up.

Of course, I risk falling into the trap of moral relativism, the typical liberal technique, but with all of the incompetent and corrupt personalities running nations today, Berlusconi is comparatively saint like.  He is not starving his people and lobbing missiles into South Korea like Kim Jong Il.   He is not robbing the nation, confiscating key industries and placing his family and cronies in their place like Ben Ali.  He is not hoarding the nation’s resource wealth and spreading it only to the extended “royal family’ while leaving the nation impoverished, like Saudi Arabia and most arab nations.  He is not financing antagonists who would bomb and harass the Western world who happen to disagree with his religion, again like some Arab rulers.  He is not allowing his sadistic sons to run around terrorizing the population as did Saddam Hussein during his happier days.   He is not ruling by decree and nationalizing state assets like Hugo Chavez.   He is not trying to transform the most successful nation state in the history of man to become a flaccid socialist one,  apparently the goal of the current U.S. president.

Compared to some of the illustrious statesmen running other countries today, Silvio’s peccadilloes are rather pedestrian.  No one can deny he is narcissistic like many men of wealth. He lives like Hugh Hefner without the campy trappings and oily personna. At least Silvio has the decency to put on a suit.   How quaint that running after girls is viewed with such distaste when the world is full of other self important egomaniacs with much more vile and sinister intents.  The Italians don’t know how good they have it.  His detractors look to hang him, but the people of Italy still appear to embrace him.  And he embraces them right back….well at least the women.