Beppe Grillo on The New Yorker.

Hi everybody. Today i'm going to tell you the story of Beppe Grillo. I mean i'd like to inform you about a really long and complete article that i read on The New Yorker Magazine a couple of days ago, about him. Some people say that inside this blog there's too much Italy, but you know, first of all is my own country, and second, I write about Italy everytimes that magazines like The New Yorker or papers like the New York Times write about it. Italy is living a really difficult moment, Prodi's Government recently fell down, maybe Italians are going back to vote, just a couple of years after the last time we did it. Maybe Berlusconi will be re-elected Prime Minister, again, so, as you can understand reading these few informations, the situation in Italy seems without any good solution... if the best way is called Berlusconi, I leave you imagine the worst. The worst is called R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N. That's why i'm posting about Beppe Grillo today.

- From The New Yorker -
On September 8th 2007, two million people in two hundred and twenty cities across Italy celebrated V-Day, an unofficial new national holiday, the "V" signifying victory, vendetta, and, especially, "VAFFANCULO" ("Fuck off"). The event had been organized by Beppe Grillo, Italy's most popular comedian, to protest endemic corruption in the national government. Grillo is a distinctly Italian combination of Michael Moore and Stephen Colbert: an activist and vulgarian with a deft ear for policical satire. Grillo led the demostration in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, a large screen had been erected there, projecting tha names of twenty-four convicted criminals currently serving as senators and representatives in the Italian Parliament, or as Italian representatives in the European Parliament. "Paolo Cirino Pomicino!" Grillo shouted, citing a representative from Napoli. "Corruption and illegal campaign financing - for wich he was promoted to the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission! One day Cirino Pomicino wrote Grillo a letter, Grillo called him back and he said: "Mr. Grillo, you are making a fundamental mistake. You are confusing Justice with politics." VAF-FAN-CU-LO.
In the past eighteen monts, the Italian political class has reached a low ebb of popularity. Last year's nonfiction best-seller, wich has sold more than a million copies since its pubblication, in May, is "La Casta" ("The Caste"), by the journalist Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo. The book's title has entered into daily speech, crystallizing the wide spread perception that Italian politicians have become, as the authors write, an oligarchy of inatiable Brahmins, "born not of Brahma... but of a regime dominated by political parties and afflicted with elephaniasis." The annual budget of the Italian presidency is nearly four times that of Buckingham Palace, and federal legislators earn more than twice as much as the French, and nearly four times more than the Spanish. Paul Ginsborg, a historian at the University of Firenze affirm that party loyalty, not honesty or ability, becomes the first criterion, and the foremost goal of all parties is occupation at all costs, with loyal and servile members of the Party.
In January 1994, two officers of the Guardia di Finanza rang the doorbell of Grillo's home in Genova and asked him to accompany them to Napoli, for questioning by Agostino Cordoba, a notoriously stern public prosecutor. "I thought I was a suspect", grillo told New Yorker. "Those two guys drove me all the way down without telling me anything, closed me in a room with a computer, asked my first name, last name. I couldn't even remember my own date of birth - you can't think straight when you are in there. Then that terrible Cordoba walked by and i said, 'look, i'm cooperating completely'. Cordoba had summoned Grillo to Napoli not as a suspect but as an expert witness. In a television appearance in 1993, Grillo had revealed that SIP, the national telephone company at the time, was using erotic and astrological chat lines to generate illegal tax-free income abroad. In January of 2004, a colonnel in the Guardia di Finanza interrogated Grillo about the collapse of Parmalat, the dairy conglomerate, wich had declared bankruptcy the previous month. Last December, the Dalai Lama came to Italy, and after the Pope and the Prime Minister DECLINED TO MEET WITH HIM, he met with Grillo instead. "When China was only Comunist, everyone received the Dalai lama, but now that China is hyper-capitalist he gets blacked out". VAF-FAN-CU-LO. Grillo's Blog (beppegrillo.it) receives as many as two hundred and fifry thousand hits and two thousand comments in one day. His posts appear in English too.

That's almost all, you just read what i thought was more important of the article that The New Yorker dedicated to this Italian hero. Next April 25th there will be the second Vaffaculo Day, against Italian journalism. I hope i'll be there that day, i hope that day will remain impressed in the Italian History. I hope everyone of the politicians sitting in our ridicolous Parliament will get them fuck out of there. I strongly hope that someone, with more courage than me, will violently kick them ass. VAF-FAN-CU-LO. Thank you for your time and attention.

-The New Yorker -