Silvio e Sylvia

Sometimes the news is all the literature, theater, and plain old down-and-dirty comedy that one could ever want. When the news events in question occur in Italy, and in this case in Milan, the feeling of high drama is only intensified, as if the seat of government were transplanted onto the stage of La Scala and the curtain was raised on another scene in the grand opera of politics.

When the larger-than-life figure at the center of all the attention is the megalomaniacal head of state Silvio Berlusconi, owner of a media empire as well as the unchallenged plutocrat at the controls of Italy's government, and the reporter's voice on the radio belongs to NPR's inimitable Sylvia Poggioli, well, what can I say, it's journalistic heaven.

Take this terse summary (from an overcautious Slate):

At a rally in Milan yesterday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was met by demonstrators who shouted insults while he gave a speech. Later, when he was signing autographs, a 42-year-old with a history of mental illness hit Berlusconi on the face with a model of the Duomo cathedral. The attack left Berlusconi bloodied with two broken teeth, a fractured nose, and cuts on his nose and cheeks. Berlusconi spent the night in the hospital with a severe headache, but doctors say he's doing well.

Spare us the timid account, Slate. Burlusconi runs the most influential news outlets in his country and arguably determines what information makes it onto front pages and TV screens from Torino to Palermo. One part Rupert Murdoch and one part Benito Mussolini, I'm guessing his people make sure the national news in Rome isn't too critical of the ruling party. And I mean party. Old Silvio has earned a reputation for romancing young women that American pro golfers might envy, except he unapologetically gets away with it.

Part of the NPR story that Slate omitted was the alleged Mafia connections that helped Signor Ministerio Primo get his start in real estate, from which entrepreneurial foundations he went on to dominate the tone and substance of the right wing in Italian politics. In the tradition of Mussolini, an arrogant kind of masculinity and swagger are expected in a leader. Il Duce liked women, weapons, and fast cars too, and he wasn't a fan of dissent.

His spiritual descendant Berlusconi has recently been accused of having ties to the Mafia, which he dismisses as a figment of the American movie-going imagination. What I loved in the news account was his denial of any connections with organized crime accompanied by a promise that if he got his hands on his accusers, he would personally strangle them. Then his nose is broken by a half-crazy man in a crowd throwing a stone model of a cathedral. You can't make this stuff up.

My people are from another European peninsular nation, also bold seafaring stock who ventured far from their ports, as did the Renaissance Italians, but this kind of thing doesn't happen in Oslo. On the other hand, I haven't heard a Norsk news correspondent with a smoking hot voice like Poggioli, who can write a factual straight-news piece for the radio and deliver it on the air like poetry, like a torch singer, like the muse of the news.