Talk about mudslinging. Your correspondent from Italy in today's issue (April 28th - May 4th) seems more intent on burying Silvio Berlusconi in industrial waste, in truly outrageous fashion. I refer not to charges of tax evasion and bribery but to the cynical attempt to leave a clear impression in people's minds - most certainly as regards an international audience less familiar with Italy - that Silvio Berlusconi is a mafioso, to all intents and purposes.
Italian magistrates - no friends of Sua Eminenza - apparently having investigated and dismissed the more fanciful charges relating to Berlusconi being "Cosy with Cosa Nostra" (what a truly outrageous subtitle, allowance being made for your customary irreverence), your correspondent from Italy must be somewhat desperate to have to list two years'employment - as groundsman? estate manager? cook? what? - of a mafioso in the 1970s as evidence of Berlusconi's worrying links with organised crime.
Whilst people in Italy seem to be willing to accept, and perhaps forgive, charges of tax evasion and bribery (which Italian would dare to throw the first moral stone on this account?), the clear suggestion - see caption on Index page, and interesting priority given to these charges - that the Italian people care not a jot for investigations of "money-laundering, complicity in murder, connections with the Mafia" shows contempt for Italians and smacks of the cheapest form of journalism, falling far below my expectations of The Economist.
Come off it, Berlusca may no doubt have indulged in the customary activities - tax evasion, bribery - of many Italians, big or small, engaged in commercial activity, but no-one in good faith and with any sense of the situation in Italy can seriously entertain the suggestion that Silvio Berlusconi has links with the mafia (the Italians themselves, normally quite happy to believe in conspiracies and dark behind-the-scenes scheming, clearly do not).
Trying desperately to find a more positive aspect to your presentation of the whole issue, I suppose one could say that your correspondent from Italy has, at least, finally and unequivocally shown his/her true political colours and we will therefore be in a better position in future to judge Italian offerings of The Economist.
Yours disappointedly,
Paul Pemberton
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