Berlusconi

[london1967]

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw this in the morning  paper last week


(click and double-click to enlarge it)

[I - and some non-Italian readers - found the mocking "Italian accent" slightly racist but that's another story]

Berlusconi's latest faux pas was to tell people made homeless by the earthquake to look on the experience of living in tents as "a week-end of camping". *sigh*
I am sure he didn't mean it but a prime minister should know better.

I'll settle for quiet despair.

Comments

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

The accent is plain racist to me. But anglos are very racist.

I think Berlusconi is one of the worst people on Earth.

[london1967.livejournal.com]

Yes I suppose that they are to some extent.
(This reminded of me of something I read in the news a few months ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7455520.stm)

But on the other hand, I believe that most people and countries are. And Italy is among them (plus we also have internal racism).

No comment about Berlusconi. I really don't know how they could vote for him (I didn't!!) *sigh*

By the way, have a great Bearcelona!

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

Yes. All countries are racist against what they consider inferior. Spain is extremely racist. There's always been racism against gipsies. Now, there's great racism against latin-americans. I guess that the anglos think that everybody else is inferior. But they don't usually remember how shitty they look when drunk, LOL.

[london1967.livejournal.com]

LOL!
And you see plenty of drunken Brits in Spain! *shudder*

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

The most extreme thing I've ever seen was Thursdays after midnihg in Manchester. Being a relatively small city, lots of people walk. It was a really common sight teenager and young binge drinkers completely pissed walking on the street

[square-baker.livejournal.com]

I read an excellent book about Gypsies. Basically they are considered inferior all over Europe, and have a worse social standing than people of color did in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. No one wants to remember that thousands/millions of Gypsies were also killed in Hitler's regime.

BURY ME STANDING is the name of the book. I highly recommend it.

When I was in France years ago, I got such attitude that it has always stained the memory of the beautiful things that I saw.

[london1967.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of tension with gypsies in Italy too.

I'm sorry about your memories of France being spoilt... maybe now that Obama is popular, Americans are à la mode in France too.

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

Sorry for taking so long in replying.

I have mixed feelings about Gipsy people. In one hand, I know a few "integrated" ones (more on this term later), and despite keeping their traditions, they have no issues in society. I've been to school with gipsies whose parents worked in flea markets and a specially nice gipsy family lived for many years in the same block where I grew up. But they were working class people like the rest of us and they were completely mainstream.

The problem comes wit the "non-integrated" ones. Those are excluded from society and society excludes them. And this is a retrofeeding situation, since neither society wants them nor they want to be in society. Whose fault is it? They live in underhousing but since they deal with illegal businesses, they have luxury cars (!). Racism is usually an economic issue, therefore since these are pool, they're marginated. But then, it's very difficult to "integrate" them in society. I would never enter their neighborhoods, basically because you're muggled the moment you enter there.

To make things even more complicated, Spanish gipsies are being "replaced" in the lower layers of society by Romanian gipsies, who now hold most of their local illegal business share, including drug dealing, begging and prostitution.

[square-baker.livejournal.com]

Yes, very true also. And those non-intergrated Gypsies groups are unfortunately the ones that are romanticized without all the crime that goes with them.

Not unlike the overall homeless problem here. Everyone wants to blame "the homeless people", but there is a distinct difference between those who choose to be homeless, those who are homeless because they lost everything, and those who are mentally ill and are wandering the streets like lost zombies.

Forgive me .....

[(Anonymous)]

Dearest Franco,
Forgive me for this intrusion but I have just fallen off my office chair with laughter at Gorkabear's excellent summing up of "the British" ("they forget how sh---y" they look when they're drunk"). I applaud him. Excellent.
Sadly, I suppose that "racism" is ubiquitous but I have to say that having just returned from two trips abroad (Amsterdam, and latterly Paris) I find the british common denominator to be the lowest of the low !
Hugs,
David XXX

Re: Forgive me .....

[london1967.livejournal.com]

But it's no intrusion at all!

Maybe it's all down to being an island?

Hugs,
Franco
xxxxx

[square-baker.livejournal.com]

Berlusconi is a horrible person. BUT, how did he get reelected again?????

[london1967.livejournal.com]

I know!! Same as George W Bush!