comedian upsets Italian government

[faceless]

Comedian's anti-politics rally has Italy's ruling class worried
September 10, 2007

ROME: He has been dubbed Italy's Michael Moore, and this weekend drew tens of thousands to a rally where, with foul-mouth tirades, he demanded an overhaul of the way his country is run.

Beppe Grillo, a firebrand comedian and political satirist, is forcing Italy's ruling class to grapple with growing sentiments of distrust among citizens. Having taken on a role of moralizer, Grillo has launched a rudely worded campaign against politicians and corruption on all levels. He denies having any political ambitions, saying he just wants to mobilize citizens. And so he did. On Saturday, some 50,000 people attended a rally in Bologna, the hometown of Premier Romano Prodi, and thousands more went to simultaneous events across the country.

At the Bologna rally, Grillo lashed out against Prodi as well as against the conservative opposition of Silvio Berlusconi. He called political parties the "cancer" of democracy and criticized the current electoral system, where citizens vote for parties rather than candidates. The rally was aimed at pushing for legislation to make it impossible for anyone convicted of a crime to sit in parliament or for any lawmaker to serve two terms. Grillo says that so far he has collected 300,000 signatures to back up his petition — part of a long-running campaign to expose the two dozen or so Italian lawmakers who sit in parliament despite convictions, mostly for white-collar crimes, such as corruption, but also for Mafia association.

The "V-Day" rally was named after an Italian-language vulgarity directed at politicians, which Grillo used repeatedly to punctuate his speech. Politicians have been debating what to make of it and how to respond. Two ministers in Prodi's government supported the initiative, others saw it as a wake-up call, some shrugged it off as a comedian's coup de theatre — but nobody could ignore it. "Certainly we will need to reflect on it, there were so many people," said Cabinet minister Pierluigi Bersani.

The daily La Repubblica on Monday ran the headline: "Grillo's Jolt Shakes the Parties," while La Stampa's front page echoed "Grillo Shakes the Elite." Grillo's campaign has struck a chord in Italy, which is already buzzing over a recent best-seller detailing the privileges of the governing class regardless of political ilk. It fueled a sentiment of disaffection toward the political class that some analysts have even compared to that surrounding the "Clean Hands" corruption scandals more than a decade ago. "The weakness of the Italian politics has reached such depths that even a demonstration like this — which would normally be reviewed in the showbiz section — becomes threatening," wrote La Stampa.

Such protests might prove more dangerous for Prodi's ruling coalition, already beset by a high level of infighting. A poll published Monday in Corriere della Sera showed the government's approval ratings plunging to a new low. Some 68 percent expressed a negative view of the government's action, compared with 27 percent that viewed it favorably and 5 percent that did not express an opinion. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, said the ISPO institute that conducted it.

For the 59-year-old Grillo, success and controversy are nothing new. His blog is one of the country's most popular, and his satirical shows in theaters across Italy are often sold out. "Do not believe newspapers and TVs. They lie and lie," Grillo writes in his blog. "Banks, media, politics, big companies — they are all the same thing, the same people."

In the 1980s, Grillo had little to laugh about when he was effectively banned from public TV following a venomous joke directed at the then-powerful Socialists during a prime-time show. Since then, Grillo was seldom to be seen on TV, but his cult following started growing. He even predicted the Parmalat collapse, saying in acts preceding the 2003 scandal that the Italian dairy giant had a huge hole in its accounts.

Supporters see him as a breath of fresh air, while critics accuse him of being a populist and a demagogue. But the standup comedian from Genoa said he aims only to get Italians more involved in politics. "You must go back to doing politics every day, at the supermarket, in school, at work," he told his readers.

www.beppegrillo.it

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He sounds like he's on the ball - good stuff.