Lesbian Cops? Not in Italy!

For those who don't read Italian (and it's a shame, because the article below, from L'Espresso, is the first serious media investigation of this incident): the woman in the picture is Luana Zanaga, a 39-year-old cop who is facing suspension from her job in the Padova Questura, as well as other, as yet unspecified, disciplinary actions.

Her "crime"? Zanaga reported her colleagues for the "climate of homophobia" in her department and for ongoing discrimination against her because she is an out-of-the-closet lesbian. Zanaga reports incidents dating back to 2005, including a note from two fellow officers who suggested an unpleasant death for her in a concentration camp and a sexual advance from a male officer that ended only when she punched him. She's been charged with making false statements and "discrediting the police force."

"I expect them to make an example of me," Zanaga says, "to serve as a warning for all the others like me who stand up for themselves."

She's probably not wrong, unfortunately. It's 30 years ago in Italy and, as David Goodstein used to say, "You can always tell the pioneers. They're the ones with the arrows in their backs."

Zanaga, meanwhile, appears to be the first and, so far, the only out lesbian cop in the entire country.

News of the incident has appeared on queer blogs in Italy, but has received almost no coverage in the mainstream Italian media. Mara Carfagna, the Minister for Equal Opportunity (who maintains that discrimination against homosexuals does not exist), has made no statement.

Zanaga is nearly unprecedented in Italy, where the closet is about a hundred thousand square miles wide and virtually nobody fights for her or his rights when discriminated against--especially not in the military or the police. Zanaga marched in the LGBTQ pride march in Genova in June, and she's just not shutting up.

Meanwhile, her superiors have forced Zanaga to undergo medical and psychiatric exams in an apparent attempt to demonstrate that she's mentally ill and, in a perhaps small but wounding gesture, she was fired, shortly after coming out publicly, from her position as a coach of a girls' soccer team. The soccer club made that decision, it said, "to protect the good name of our organization" and also because they wanted to assure parents that there were no "homosexuals or drug addicts" in their midst.

If anyone knows how to reach Luana, please give her a hug for me. She's brave in a way I'd like to be brave, and courage like hers is in short supply here.

Let's just hope that all those arrows aren't enough to kill her.

**********

Agente gay a rapporto
di Paolo Tessadri
http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio//2103528

La denuncia di una poliziotta di Padova: mi vogliono punire perché sono lesbica. E, dopo gli insulti di alcuni colleghi, attacca: nelle forze dell'ordine regna ancora un clima di omofobia.

Luana Zanaga

La sua colpa? "Sono una poliziotta lesbica: per questo mi vogliono
punire". Luana Zanaga, 39 anni di Rovigo, in servizio alla Questura
di Padova, è sotto inchiesta disciplinare. Non la licenzieranno, ma
potrebbero sospenderla dal servizio fino a sei mesi. "Mi aspetto
una punizione esemplare, un monito per tutti quelli come me che
alzano la testa". Il provvedimento dovrà portare la firma del capo
della polizia, Antonio Manganelli. Capelli corti, poco più di un
metro e 60 di altezza, all'apparenza minuta ma incredibilmente
tenace nel rivendicare i suoi diritti: "Parlo come cittadina",
precisa. Perché l'accusano proprio di questo: di aver fatto
dichiarazioni senza autorizzazione e di aver portato discredito
alle forze dell'ordine. Lei sostiene di essersi difesa, dopo gli
insulti dei colleghi: ha denunciato di vivere in un "ambiente
omofobico" e per queste dichiarazioni a ottobre è finita sotto
inchiesta.

Già nel 2005 a Padova era stata trasferita dalle volanti alla sala
radio, subito dopo avere scritto su un sito omosessuale: una
vicenda per la quale parla esplicitamente di mobbing. A punirla fu
proprio una donna, un vicequestore: ogni 15 giorni doveva andare
dal medico della polizia perché ne attestasse l'idoneità. "Mi
chiedeva se stavo bene con la mia omosessualità e io rispondevo che
stavo benissimo", ricorda. È tornata alle sue amate volanti pochi
mesi fa, con l'arrivo del nuovo questore. Ma la situazione con
sembra cambiare: "Nel nostro ambiente siamo discriminati come
omosessuali". Le torna sempre alla mente un suo ex collega
siciliano delle volanti di Milano. Lo deridevano, lo insultavano:
una mattina di sei anni fa si è sparato. Ed è stata proprio lei a
portargli soccorso.

Fra tanti messaggi di questi giorni ha ricevuto anche le mail di
due poliziotti, un uomo e una donna, che l'hanno consigliata di
"bruciare in un lager". "Io amo la polizia, a quattro anni giocavo
con un modellino di moto della squadra mobile, a 13 ho rotto le
scatole a uno spacciatore davanti a casa e nel '98 sono entrata in
servizio. Fin da piccola sognavo questo lavoro", ammette Luana
Zanaga. Laureata in Scienze politiche, non è mai riuscita a vincere
il concorso per funzionaria perché, sospetta, v'è stato ostracismo.
E ricorda un episodio al corso della scuola di polizia di Pescara.
"Girava voce che io e un'altra poliziotta stessimo insieme e alle
due di notte un responsabile voleva entrare nelle nostre camere".
Il suo, dichiara, non è un caso isolato: parla di omosessualità
diffusa all'interno delle forze dell'ordine.

Motivi per punirla per il lavoro non ce ne sono, il suo stato di
servizio è impeccabile: voto 'distinto' nel rapporto di
valutazione. Al suo attivo 32 arresti, un sequestro sventato, "ma
mai un encomio, mai un riconoscimento da qualche superiore".

Poi, a ottobre dello scorso anno, un giornale patavino pubblica un
rapporto riservato interno in cui si rivela la sua convivenza con
un'altra donna. La spia - ritiene Luana - è uno dei colleghi che in
questi anni l'hanno discriminata, che ha voluto screditarla
pubblicamente. Chiamata a rapporto dai superiori, Luana non tace la
propria omosessualità e si difende. Ma le ripercussioni sono
immediate: a Rovigo, dove doveva essere trasferita, dichiarano la
sua "incompatibilità territoriale". E proprio da Rovigo parte un
violento attacco da un funzionario, che la dipinge come una "una
matta lesbica". La polizia pochi giorni fa l'ha 'processata' per
ore davanti a una commissione disciplinare e fra tre mesi le sarà
inflitta la pena. La scorsa settimana ha ottenuto anche la
solidarietà di Gianfranco Fini, che ha incontrato insieme ad altri
rappresentanti di associazioni gay. E non rinnega nulla: "Se
rinascessi, vorrei rinascere lesbica e fare la poliziotta".

(02 giugno 2009)

From The Land That Knows No Shame ...

Today I'm simply stealing wholesale from Charles Lambert (I even stole the headline of this post). I'm on a deadline and, anyway, I couldn't have said it any better.

Why does he bother? Because "freedom of the press" in Italy has come to mean "you're free to invent anything you want to." And also because someone has to (bother)!

-----------------------

Thursday, 2 July 2009

All the news that's fit to print
by Charles Lambert

The blonde in the green tee-shirt is Noemi Letizia. She's the eighteen-year-old who calls Silvio Berlusconi Papi and can't decide whether to cavort on a table in her underwear or represent Italy at the European parliament (and, let's face it girls, could you?). The man standing next to her, one hand adoringly encircling her neck, is her boyfriend. His name is Domenico Cozzolino. The older couple behind them, lips pressed together as the pressure within Vesuvius slowly builds to their rear, are the happily-married parents of Noemi, Signor and Signora Letizia, enjoying a moment's intimacy. The photograph comes from a popular Italian magazine called Chi (Who).

In the preceding paragraph the first and last sentences are true. The rest of it is nonsense. Domenico Cozzolino is not, and never was, Noemi's boyfriend. He's pimped himself on afternoon TV and is now a PR. He was asked by Noemi, who'd apparently been prompted by someone else, to pretend to be having an affair with her, indeed, to be engaged to be married. Naturally, no PR worth his salt would turn down the chance to be photographed with a household name for a mass circulation magazine, even if it does mean lying through his teeth. And talking of lying, the couple of canoodlers in the background may be Noemi's parents, but they aren't usually this affectionate with each other. They're separated and have been for some time. The photograph, like the article accompanying it, is a complete fabrication. It's a lie designed to legitimate the Letizia family and their squalid dealings with the Italian prime minister. Who also happens to be the owner of Mondadori. Which happens to publish Chi.

I don't know why I bother.

Racism is a boomerang....

The more than fifty-year-old Italian ARCI (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana) is launching a new campaign against racism and homophobia in Italy. Their poster appears below:


The Rome-based ARCI was founded in Florence in 1957 with the purpose of encouraging the diffusion of democratic values and fighting “nazifascismo,” which is a single concept in country that was governed by both Nazis and Fascists during WWII.

The caption on the poster reads:

“You call us dirty nigger and stinking lesbian, but you're offended if someone calls you an Italian gangster. Racism is a boomerang. Sooner or later it’ll come back to hit you.”

The semiotic approach of the campaign is pretty intriguing. What’s useful to know by way of background is that “razzismo” is used in Italy to mean “discrimination” or “bigotry” of all kinds and not just race-based prejudice. Thus someone who degrades or disparages women or gay people (or Sicilians, for that matter) can be considered “racist.”

There’s both a certain efficiency and an immense danger of oversimplification in smooshing issues together in that way, and I have to admit I still wince when I hear an Italian use “racist” when a good old “homophobe” or “sexist” would do nicely (and both words exist in Italian).

The other thing the campaign takes for granted, which a non-Italian might or might not immediately grasp, is the degree to which Italians are offended by the assumption that Italian culture (as the popular saying would have it) can be summed up as “pizza, mandolins, and the mafia.”

The Italic Studies Institute of American (“Guardian of the Italian Heritage”), for example, issued a study in 2002 in which they analyzed 1,233 American films made since 1928 and concluded that 69% “portrayed Italians in a negative light.” Of the films analyzed, 40% depicted Italians as “mob characters,” with the remaining 60% of the negative portrayals divided among “boors, buffoons, bigots or bimbos.”

When The Sopranos arrived in Italy in 2001 (with record TV audience shares—about 10 million viewers—for the series’ premiere), Italians seemed to take it a bit less seriously than did Italo-Americans, but I suspect that’s largely because the series dealt with Americans first and foremost. Italians are well aware that Italian-Americans have almost nothing to do with Italians, and they're not entirely unwilling to believe that America is a four-million-square-mile-wide crime zone (so much so, in fact, that the media are likely to refer to any incident involving a troubled neighborhood or a violent protest in Italy as the “Far West,” “the Bronx,” or “Fort Apache”).

In any case, there’s no question that the association rankles, and ARCI’s obvious attempt is to suggest that negative stereotyping comes from a similar place, regardless of the target.

Frankly, I’m enthusiastic about the attempt to educate the public that racial/ethnic prejudice and homophobia are related in their consequences (if not necessarily in their source). For decades, the LGBTQ movement in the U.S. (even back when it was just “the gay movement”) has tried hard to associate itself with the traditional civil-rights movement, and it has always been a hard sell.

Similarly, attempts to equate homophobia with racism have met with mixed success in the states, not least because of a few insulting, ham-handed attempts to draw parallels between Harvey Milk and Martin Luther King or to compare queer protesters under arrest with Rosa Parks. We’re seeing some of the results of that failure in the current same-sex marriage debate.

Meanwhile, the history of dealing with cultural prejudice and the “-isms” is so different in Italy (which has never had what one might reasonably call a “civil rights movement”), that I wonder if ARCI might not just be on to something.

I’m a little less convinced by ARCI’s claim that the new posters will “appear all over Italy,” since I’ve heard that song before (see my piece on the Tuscan Region’s “Sexual Orientation is Not A Choice” campaign back in 2007—those posters were also supposed to go up “all over Tuscany,” but I never saw a single one in a public place.)

ARCI’s own distribution efforts aside, it’s hard to know how much attention the campaign is going to get in Italian schools or the media. Not much, would be my prediction, but I’d be happy to be wrong. On the other hand, over the last year the Italian government has whipped up so much racism (in the Italian sense of the word) that a national response by a respected organization would be more than welcome.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what Mara Carfagna, the ex-cover girl turned Minister for Equal Opportunity, will make of ARCI’s campaign. If she’s smart, she’ll ignore it, but the Italian right-wing is feeling more than usually testy lately, and she’s just likely, as Italians put it, to miss a perfect opportunity to keep her mouth shut.

How Paranoid is Paranoid Enough?

On June 5, 2009, during an annual celebration dedicated to the Arma dei Carabinieri (the Italian military police force that generally keeps civil order but is also called into combat overseas), TV crews (and several others) caught Minister of Tourism, Michela Vittoria Brambilla, in a one-armed Fascist salute following the playing of the Italian National Anthem.

Brambilla, who is frequently mentioned as the likely political successor to Silvio Berlusconi, serves as an Undersecretary in Berlusconi's cabinet. The event was an official state function, and she was present as a government representative.

A photo of the event was published in the Repubblica on June 6.



Meanwhile, the YouTube video (below) has been making the usual rounds.



Brambilla has also been accused of attending a separate event on May 29, 2009, said to have been an official "Black Shirt" assembly, and at which, it is alleged, she was also seen giving the Fascist salute.

Brambilla responds as follows: "The Italian Left really makes me laugh. They don't have any political issues to talk about so our adversaries are reduced to commenting on the angle of my elbow or the height of my arm when I salute the citizens of Italy."

In other words, not exactly a denial. Rather, Brambilla's snotty riposte is a typical example of the Italian Right's media strategy (which, it has to be said, they sort of borrowed from Reagan, after Sarah Palin got done using it: Neither the Great Communicator nor American's Favorite Soccer Mom particularly liked answering questions they didn't write themselves, and neither do the emissaries of Berlusconistan).

Someone is going to alert me before they start building the work camps, right?

Mr. Berlusconi Goes to Washington

And the original version in Italian from the good folks at www.bastardidentro.it:

One Ronde Does Not A Summer Make....

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the Italian government is about to give the official nod to the recently formed Italian National Guard (Guardia Nazionale Italiana), whose website you can see here and whose uniforms and emblems might just remind you of something. If the law is approved, the GNI will activate its posses (they call them “citizen patrols”) in public places in Italy as a means to “help” the beleaguered police, whom the GNI is convinced are failing to maintain public order.

The GNI is a loose association of ex-cops, ex-military, and ex-Fascist party adherents (though perhaps, in the latter case, you could even leave off the “ex”) heartily supported by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, who was quoted in yesterday’s La Repubblica as saying, “We want citizens to be able to support the police forces in our cities. People say, ‘They want street patrols.’ Yes, street patrols are exactly what we want.... Anything else is just idle chat. We’re not going to back down, despite the accusations that we’re trying to bring back the Black Shirts and all the rest. We’re going to see this through because it will bring greater security to our cities.”

The step you might have missed—a linkage that Maroni and his cronies have by now forged in Teflon—is that “more security” is a euphemism for “fewer immigrants.” For the GNI, the site says, “the Italian citizen is the first and most important pillar of the State,” a phrase not without a certain level of euphemism all its own. An alarming number of Italians, meanwhile, have swallowed—hook, line, and sinker—the equation “foreigner=danger,” and that particular genie isn't going back in the bottle any time soon.

For the record, the GNI denies that the “Black Sun” they’ve adopted as a symbol has anything to do with the similar logo used by the SS during World War II or which has more recently been employed by NeoNazi groups. On the GNI site, instead, they trace the Sole Nero back 13,000 years and associate it with the Kaliyuga. Just like when you spy a swastika tattooed on the shoulder of the skinhead who is burning a cross on your lawn, it doesn’t have anything to do with Nazism. He only put it there because of his deep spiritual connection to an ancient and holy Sanskrit symbol.

The GNI, meanwhile, officially insists that it is an apolitical “patriotic group” organized to provide an outlet for citizens who feel the call to serve their country in a concrete fashion and established as a direct response to reductions in staffing and funding for police forces. As of this writing, the GNI claims to have enrolled 2,500 Guardisti, who are simply waiting the approval of the proposed legislation that will authorize them to begin their patrols in Milan, Sicily, Puglia, and Calabria.

The street patrols will be carried out by unarmed militiamen (and –women?), who will nonetheless be equipped with donated vehicles, boats, and even an airplane. Charles Lambert has more to say about it on his blog, “Dressing Up.”

It’s times like these that make you long for an Italian Civil Liberties Union, Of course, that would only work in a country that had any.

Life in Berlusconistan -- Episode 12,651: Parade Route Denied to Roma Pride 2009 Organizers

Every year, just like clockwork, this sort of stuff happens in Russia, with plenty of water cannons, riot police, and arrests for people who attempt to demonstrate peacefully anyway.

But not in Italy, right? Because Italy is a democracy. Or, at least, that's what it says on their web page.

Why, in 2009, isn't Rome's mayor ashamed of himself? Why isn't the police department hanging its head in embarrassment? I dunno the answers, but I do know one thing: If this is how Italy intends to treat its gay people, it doesn't deserve to have any (pace, beloved Oscar).

Here's a letter from the organizers of Roma Pride 2009 about the city of Rome's refusal to grant permission for the annual march to take place this year.

------------------

June 2, 2009

Dear Friends,

Each passing day brings this year’s annual Roma Pride celebration nearer. With only ten days to go before the scheduled June 13th date, however, the issue of the parade route remains unresolved.

As many of you already know, on June 2nd, police officials in Rome’s Questura denied permission to the organizers of Roma Pride 2009—for the third time—to use the parade route. they had proposed. The motivations for the latest refusal, which have become increasingly pretextual and absurd with each denial, have forced the Rome Pride 2009 committee to consider legal recourse to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court and to the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano.

In addition to the customary issues of LGBT rights and discrimination in Italy, we now face this serious infringement of our basic liberties as citizens. Rome Pride 2009—a significant demonstration for civil rights and for the visibility of an entire community—is under threat thanks to the arbitrary and unilateral decision-making processes of the city of Rome and its officials.

This year, just as last year, city authorities have not simply caved in to the dictates of the Vatican in denying Rome Pride 2009 access to Piazza San Giovanni, outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran, as a post-parade gathering point. They have gone so far as to successfully oppose the parade itself, denying the celebration’s organizers permission to follow the parade route used in 2008 (which leads from Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza Navona).

These actions set a dangerous precedent for all citizens and for all future demonstrations, marches, and rallies. It is an alarming attack on the principle of separation of church and state and on our freedom of association. As such, it represents a threat not solely to Italians who are lesbian, gay, bi, or trans but to all the country’s citizens.

For all of these reasons, we ask that you do everything you can to show your solidarity with Roma Pride 2009.

You can indicate your personal support or that of your group or association by sending an email to romapride@gmail.com (please copy me personally at a.maccarrone@mariomieli.org).

Additionally, please spread the word by forwarding this message to your friends and families, colleagues, LGBT groups, activists, rights organizations, politicians, and parade organizers in other parts of the world.

If you are a journalist, or if you blog or publish a newsletter or periodical either in print or online, please pass this news on to all of your readers and contacts. The diffusion of information about the obstacles placed in the path of Roma Pride 2009 is our main weapon against the shroud of media silence that has fallen over this situation.

With gratitude for your support and help,

Andrea Maccarrone
a.maccarrone@mariomieli.org
romapride@gmail.com
http://www.romapride.it

Una Rosa ...

... per il mio amore, che mi mancherà così tanto. Non sei mai solo, Mouse. Ti amo con tutto il mio cuore.

Immagine ...

I wish I could draw an invisible wall around this house and carve out our own country. Citizens, only two, but visitors welcome: no passports, no visas, no border police. A safe place that no one could ever threaten or take away...

Follow the link for more Spring Garden photos.

I Carried Out My Orders....

Quoted in the Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper on May 9, 2009, Premier Berlusconi commented on the "respingimento" (rejection) of 200 Africans who attempted to enter Italy illegally, only to be rounded up and forcibly returned to Libya (the subject of the article below).

"The center-left wants a multi-ethnic Italy," Berlusconi commented. "We don't see it that way."

---------------

La Repubblica
9 maggio 2009

Parlano i militari delle motovedette italiane che hanno riportato in Libia i migranti.|
Solo un giovane del Mali è riuscito a nascondersi ed è sbarcato a Lampedusa: "Miracolato"

"Ho eseguito gli ordini ma mi vergogno. Quei disperati ci chiedevano aiuto" ["I carried out my orders, but I'm ashamed of myself. Those people were desperate and they were asking us for help."]

dal nostro inviato FRANCESCO VIVIANO



LAMPEDUSA - "È l'ordine più infame che abbia mai eseguito. Non ci ho dormito, al solo pensiero di quei disgraziati", dice uno degli esecutori del "respingimento". "Dopo aver capito di essere stati riportati in Libia - aggiunge - ci urlavano: "Fratelli aiutateci". Ma non potevamo fare nulla, gli ordini erano quelli di accompagnarli in Libia e l'abbiamo fatto. Non racconterò ai miei figli quello che ho fatto, me ne vergogno".

Parlano i militari delle motovedette italiane - quella della Guardia di Finanza, la "Gf 106" e quella della Capitaneria di porto, la "Cpp 282" - appena rientrati dalla missione rimpatrio. Sono stati loro a riportare in Libia oltre 200 extracomunitari, tra i quali 40 donne (3 incinte) e 3 bambini, dopo averli soccorsi mercoledì scorso nel Canale di Sicilia. Un "successo", lo ha definito il ministro Maroni, che finanzieri e marinai delle due motovedette non condividono anche se hanno eseguito quegli ordini. Niente nomi naturalmente, i marinai delle due motovedette rischierebbero quanto meno una punizione se non peggio. Ma molti non nascondono il loro sdegno per quello che hanno vissuto e dovuto fare. "Eravamo impegnati in altre operazioni - dicono fiamme gialle e marinai della capitaneria - poi improvvisamente è arrivato l'ordine di andare a soccorrere quelle tre imbarcazioni, di trasbordarli sulle nostre motovedette e di riportarli in Libia".

Non è stato facile, a bordo di quelle carrette del mare c'erano donne incinte, tre bambini e tutti gli altri che avevano tentato di raggiungere Lampedusa. "Molti stavano male, alcuni avevano delle gravi ustioni, le donne incinte erano quelle che ci preoccupavano di più, ma non potevamo fare nulla, gli ordini erano quelli e li abbiamo eseguiti. Quando li abbiamo presi a bordo dai tre barconi ci hanno ringraziato per averli salvati. In quel momento, sapendo che dovevamo respingerli, il cuore mi è diventato piccolo piccolo. Non potevo dirgli che li stavamo portando di nuovo nell'inferno dal quale erano scappatati a rischio della vita".

A bordo hanno anche pregato Dio ed Allah che li aveva risparmiati dal deserto, dalle torture e dalla difficile navigazione verso Lampedusa. Ma si sbagliavano, Roma aveva deciso che dovevano essere rispediti in Libia. "Nessuno di loro lo aveva capito, ci chiedevano come mai impiegavamo tanto tempo per arrivare a Lampedusa, rispondevamo dicendo bugie, rassicurandoli".

La bugia non è durata molto, poco prima dell'alba qualcuno ha notato che le luci che vedevano da lontano non erano quelle di Lampedusa ma quelle di Tripoli. Alla fine i marinai italiani sono stati costretti a spiegare: "Non è stato facile dire a tutta quella gente che li avevamo riportati da dove erano partiti. Erano stanchi, avevano navigato con i barconi per cinque giorni, senza cibo e senza acqua. Non hanno avuto la forza di ribellarsi, piangevano, le donne si stringevano i loro figli al petto e dai loro occhi uscivano lacrime di disperazione".

Lo sbarco a Tripoli è avvenuto poco dopo le sette del mattino: "Vederli scendere ci ha ferito tantissimo. Ci gridavano: "Fratelli italiani aiutateci, non ci abbandonate"". Li hanno dovuti abbandonare, invece, li hanno lasciati al porto di Tripoli dove c'erano i militari libici che li aspettavano. Sulla banchina c'erano anche i volontari delle organizzazioni umanitarie del Cir e dell'Onu, ma non hanno potuto far nulla, si sono limitati a contare quei disperati che a fatica, scendevano dalla passerelle delle motovedette per tornare nell'inferno dal quale erano scappati. Le donne sono state separate dagli uomini e portati in "centri d'accoglienza" vicino Tripoli. Non si sa che fine faranno.

Solo uno è riuscito a sfuggire al rimpatrio. Un ventenne del Mali che aveva intuito cosa stava succedendo a bordo e si era nascosto sotto un telone. Ha messo la testa fuori solo quando la motovedetta della Finanza è attraccata a Lampedusa, ha aspettato che a bordo non ci fosse più nessuno e poi è sceso anche lui. È stato rintracciato mentre passeggiava nelle strade dell'isola ed ha subito confessato. Adesso si trova nel centro della base Loran di Lampedusa. Un miracolato.

Hold That Thought

This is no time for cavils about how you’re not religious and you don’t “do” prayer—let’s not even mention white light or healing circles. Everybody believes in hope, right? Everybody wishes their friends well, right? So do that, please. And do it a lot.

1. Here’s where we live. Imagine us safe and together within that circle. Imagine the circle strong and unbroken. Imagine the home we’ve made together—with all our silly, cheap souvenirs from trips here and there, our postcards attached to the fridge with magnets, our books, our dirty socks, the couch where we watch too much TV, the table where we dunk biscotti in our coffee every morning—imagine that environment uninterrupted and whole. (If a few people we don’t actually know get blessed inside the circle, hey: it’s for a good cause.)

2. Here are a couple of shots from our garden from last year. Your job is to imagine us sitting at the rickety little table in our tiny courtyard and looking at things like that again this year. Picture us on all the warm mornings and evenings to come, eating out there and working out there and just sitting there watching things grow and feeling lucky and grateful to be together.

3. And here are a last two from our garden right now. Here, your job is to imagine us being able to be together and watch all of those things grow up, get planted, and produce their flowers, fruits, vegetables or what have you, as the months go by. Picture us eating lots of salads, and putting our own basil on pizza, and making risotto with fresh peas, and canning the leftover tomatoes when Fall comes along. Picture us peaceful.

With much love,

Wendell

Lessons in Grownup Etiquette

Unexpectedly, Friend A calls to say that Friend B is suddenly in the hospital, the kind of serious being in the hospital that must be described with words like “chemotherapy” and “intensive care.”

Friend A is careful to warn me, however—including in a follow-up email—that I must, under no circumstances, contact Friend B because I am not supposed to know that Friend B is seriously ill, or in the hospital, or both. I cannot send a card or a text message, nor can I phone. Visits, of course, are out of the question.

Now, what I would like more than anything else, is for Friend B not to be in the hospital. That is, what I wish is that the (let’s call them) facilitating conditions did not exist in the first place. Beyond that, my next preference would be not to have been enrolled in a Grownup Secret that I don’t know what to do with.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I would behave if I were gravely ill. I do know I wouldn’t want to have to describe the details of my treatment or my prognosis over and over and over again. I wouldn’t want to have to face either false cheerfulness or enforced grimness on the part of my friends. I wouldn’t want medical advice or information about miracle cures downloaded from the internet.

I wouldn’t want to have to confront what Anatole Broyard described, in his book Intoxicated by My Illness, as others’ need for the ill person to be ill properly, to assume the “role” we are taught (by TV movies or Kubler-Ross books or Oprah) is the appropriate one: full of emotional gravitas and spiritual maturity or, alternately, brimming with heart-breaking vulnerability and bracing honesty.

So perhaps, if I were gravely ill, I would also erect cordons around myself to keep my condition secret; perhaps I would elect others to serve as gatekeepers and bodyguards.

At the same time, in the decade that ran roughly from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, as I watched one friend after another fall ill and die from HIV/AIDS-related complications, I realized that the committees of bedside bouncers and concierges of convalescence that gathered around the sick and the dying were often self-appointed, that their duties were not necessarily guided by the wishes of the person who was ill.

At least twice, to my shame, I served as one of those “caregivers” who decided who could know and how much, who could telephone and who could only send a card, who could be granted an audience and who could be entrusted with a set of house keys. Sometimes, the ill person even enjoyed these ministrations, the chance to settle grudges or to enforce those hierarchies of intimacy and friendship that exist always but are virtually never explicated, except during illness or tragedy.

More often, however, it was the sentinels themselves who relished the mandarin power to wield information, to permit or to refuse, to allow or to demur. Even though in those years, and at least in San Francisco, sickness and death were widely considered to be a community spectacle (the way—forgive the macabre parallel—pregnant women are often treated as though they were a public matter), not everyone was entitled to a backstage pass.

I think, nonetheless, if I were ill, that I would want more than anything else to know what was taking place in my friends’ lives; I would be more avid for their news than they could ever be for mine.

I have never been seriously ill, or at least not since I was a small child. But I have been around enough illness—more than enough—to know that it is a tedious, monotonous affair and that its worst feature is its trick of isolating the ill person from life beyond the sick room, the clinic, the rounds of doctors’ offices. It is like exile to a country where you know no one and where the natives speak to you in a strange language that you must learn instantly and resign yourself to using imperfectly.

In that situation, I would want distraction. I would want gossip and movie reviews. I would want to know how the garden was growing and whether the increase in bus fares looked as though it would get through the city council. I would want anything that pulled me upright and reconnected me to the world. Especially if I feared leaving it. Especially if I really was leaving it.

I am not, obviously, in a position to know the “truth” of Friend B’s wishes. Perhaps other people would be of no comfort at all; doubtless there are factors that I cannot apprehend from my location on that other continent, the land of the well.

And yet I can only be perplexed by the decision to keep others at bay—assuming, indeed, that it was a decision. Because to ward off the ham-handed sympathy of others, their awkward curiosity and their palpable discomfort, is also to deny their warmth and humor, their sustenance, their ability to carry with them everywhere, like birds, the seeds of heedlessness and of a voluptuous, temporary amnesia.

So this is for Friend B, who will never read it: what I might have said, if I’d been able. If I were not part of a Grownup Secret I am not grownup enough to understand.

Not One Euro for the Earthquake in Abruzzo - Giacomo Di Girolamo

Giacomo Di Girolamo is a journalist in Marsala, Sicily. His open letter, my translation of which appears below, was first published on Facebook several days after the 6 April 2009 earthquake in the Abruzzo region (centered about ten kilometers west of the town of L’Aquila). Di Girolamo’s letter quickly set a record for readers and comments and, on 15 April 2009, La Repubblica’s Adriano Sofri responded to Di Girolamo in a front-page Op-Ed. His half-hearted rebuke suggested that Di Girolamo’s purpose was rhetorical rather than actual—in other words, Sofri opined, the thousands who wrote to say they agreed with Di Girolamo, and probably even Di Girolamo himself, had actually parted with their Euros after all, even if they did so with misgivings.

Leaving aside the question of whether it is or isn’t appropriate to donate money to Abruzzo earthquake relief, the rest of what Di Girolamo says is incontrovertible. The media circus around the earthquake has been shameless. The photo opportunities for politicians mouthing pieties have been endless. And, slowly, alarming facts are beginning to come out: that supposedly seismic-proofed buildings such as the University Student Residence and the San Salvatore Hospital in L’Aquila, both of which were substantially destroyed, may have been constructed with cement mixed with beach sand (taken illegally from the nearby seashore) rather than lime, a substantial savings for contractors but a guarantee that structures built in such a way will be less resistant; that city officials repeatedly told residents, despite literal months of hundreds of smaller earthquakes, not to worry, to go back home, not to be alarmist—and, in the meantime, promulgated no evacuation plan for the city.

As for what will likely come of all the promises of funding and rebuilding and so forth, it's enough to read Roberto Saviano's comments in The Independent. If you haven't lived in Italy, it's difficult to believe that things could go so wrong or be so corrupt (if you live in New Orleans, it's probably less difficult to believe), but they do and they are. And that's part of what gives Di Girolamo's letter so much impact: When he says that what he wants is "an efficient national government," he's asking for a lot.

In writing that the Abruzzo earthquake would provide politicians with a "front" that could be used to "justify anything and everything," Di Girolamo was also more than a little prescient. During an April 16 news conference, Prime Minister Berlusconi explained why it was impossible to combine the upcoming referendum with the scheduled elections for the European Parliament -- one of Di Girolamo's suggestions and a move that would save the government literally hundreds of millions of Euros.

It couldn't be done, Berlusconi said, because the Lega Nord, the powerful right-wing political party whose stated goal is to detach several northern regions from the rest of Italy and create a new country, Padania (see Lega Nord in Wiki for more information), threatened to call for a no-confidence vote in Parliament and cause the government to fall. It's complicated, but basically the issue is that the referendum would be valid only if a certain percentage of voters show up to vote: the Lega Nord doesn't want the referendum to pass and is worried that combining the elections would increase voter turnout and, thus, validate the referendum. Hence their threat.

To allow the government to fall at a time of economic crisis and when Italy was dealing with the aftereffects of a devastating earthquake, Berlusconi said, was out of the question. When a reporter directly asked Berlusconi whether it wasn't an enormous waste of money to hold two elections, he responded, "Look, this doesn't have anything to do with me and this is not the time for a question like that." End of discussion.

Meanwhile, also on April 16, Radio Capital broadcast an investigative report on the collapse of the San Salvatore Hospital. The report revealed, among other things, that the firm responsible for building the hospital with faulty materials went bankrupt many years ago. Other construction firms and suppliers who worked on the hospital are still in business, however, but thanks to the Italian system of using subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, and sub-sub-subcontractors, ultimate responsibility for the shoddy construction may never be determined. The investigation and legal proceedings, in any case, would take at least ten years to conclude, at which point many of the claims would have to be dismissed because the statue of limitations would have run out.

One of the paradoxes of life in Italy is precisely this: that it is, at the very same moment, a modern, post-industrial, Western nation -- and a third-world country.

* * * * * *

Not One Euro for the Earthquake in Abruzzo
by Giacomo Di Girolamo
Trans. by Wendell Ricketts

You'll have to forgive me, but I won’t be donating so much as a single cent toward the fund -raising efforts now underway for the victims of the earthquake in the Abruzzo. What I'm saying sounds like an obscenity, I know, and I also know that people normally flaunt the opposite position, with none of the modesty that charity requires.

But I’ve made up my mind. I won’t be making any telephone calls to toll-free numbers that extract a Euro from my account; I won’t be sending any "donate-a-Euro" text messages. From my end, there won’t be any bank transfers to special accounts set up for earthquake-relief. I don’t have a spare bedroom to offer, no summer house on the coast to open up to a needy family, no old clothes to donate, not even ones that have gone out of style.

I resisted the celebrity appeals, the minutes of silence at the soccer games, the statements by politicians, our Prime Minister being moved to tears on live TV. The television schedules turned topsy-turvy, the non-stop live broadcasts, the appeals superimposed on the screen during prime time—none of it made an impression on me. I’m not going to donate one single Euro. And I believe that’s the greatest gesture of civility that I, as an Italian, can make at a time like this.

I’m not going to donate so much as a Euro because the thing that is destroying this country is charity: the stereotype of the generous Italian, of that bungling populace guilty of every kind of foul-up and impropriety but which, in the midst of tragedy, is capable of spasms of generosity and is consequently forgiven everything. That’s the point: I’m sick and tired of that Italy. I want nothing more to be forgiven. Generosity, unfortunately, and with it charity, is a pretense. We’re still standing there, on the edge of that well in Vermicino in 1981, waiting to see whether little Alfred will make it out alive,[1] holding on to one another with all our might. The compassion we suffer from (and which we offer one another) is genuine. But we haven’t moved one single centimeter.

In fact, I believe that tragedies, all of them, can be anticipated. The wells covered over. The guilty parties identified. The damage repaired in a timely manner. I refuse to donate a dime, because I already pay my taxes. And what I pay is a lot. Those taxes already include money for rebuilding, for aid, for police, fire fighters, and other public safety measures. All of which winds up being spent for other things. And that, in turn, means that the police, fire fighters, and public-safety authorities turn to Italians for donations when they need money. I’m saying no. Go get the money out of all the illustrious tax cheats that permeate this country’s economy.

My taxes also pay for the courts whose job is supposed to be to figure out who is speculating on building safety, and which are supposed to be doing that job before catastrophes take place. With my taxes I also support an entire political establishment—all of them, at every level of government, incapable of accomplishing anything, not one single thing, unless you count putting themselves front-and-center whenever there’s a camera in sight.

Even the President of the Sicily Region, Raffaele Lombardo, went to visit the areas hit by the earthquake—a trip paid for, like all the others, by us, the taxpayers. But what was the point? Was there really any need for him to go?

I might have been able to come up with a Euro, or maybe even two. Then Berlusconi started talking about building a “New Town” in L'Aquila, and I thought about “Milano 2,”[2] about the lake with its swans, and about the neologism “new town.” Where did he get that from? Where did he read it? How long had he been mulling that one over?

A time of anguish like this can’t be allowed to be marked by silence. Everything has to be toyed with, reproduced for the spectator to consume. That’s where “New Town” comes from. It’s a brand name. Like Brooklyn Chewing Gum.[3]

I could have shelled out a few cents. Then I saw that even Renato Schifani had decided to pay a visit to the earthquake zone. The President of the Senate declared that “what we need at a time like this is a united political effort.” Amen to that. But don't ask me to be on your side, because I’m not like you. I work. I don’t make my living from politics, on the backs of the community. While you, all of you, are responsible for what happened, because in one form or another you’ve governed the Italians and the ground they stand on for generation after generation, I am guilty of nothing. In fact, I'm in favor of justice. What you’re in favor of is the kind of solidarity that helps us forget about the fact that there isn’t any justice.

I’m not going to part with it, my Euro. Because I remembered my mother, who worked for the Italian government for forty years: In an entire year, her pension is worth what Schifani earns in a single month. So explain why I should fork over my Euro. To pay for what? Oh and by the way: When the Belice earthquake hit Western Sicily in 1968, my parents were deeply touched by what had happened, and donated some of their savings to the victims.

Then there was the earthquake in Irpinia in 1980, and once again my parents made a noble and symbolic donation through their post-office account. For the rebuilding. And we all know how that turned out.[4]

After Irpinia, there was the quake in Umbria in 1997. Then, in 2002, in San Giuliano di Puglia in Molise, where no one could have failed to be moved by the story of the classroom that collapsed on twenty-seven children, killing them and their teacher.

But now I’ve had enough. What’s the point of sending aid if everything goes on just the way it always has?

They’ve discovered, just the way decent journalists should do (now there’s a good way to spend a Euro—buy a newspaper written by decent journalists) that one of the schools that collapsed in L’Aquila was once actually a hotel. With the stroke of a pen, however, some obliging city bureaucrat decided to transform it into a school, regardless of the fact that it satisfied not even the minimum safety requirements for such a building.

In fact, in my own city, Marsala, there’s a school just like it, the largest one in the area: the Istituto Tecnico Commerciale. For thirty years it has been housed in a building that’s really a hotel transformed into a school. Not one safety requirement has ever been respected in this papier-mâché building with 600 students. To date, the Province of Trapani has spent nearly €7 million in rent on that school, where—just to give one example—the asbestos subceiling in the gym collapsed last October during a sirocco. (A sirocco!! Not an earthquake! A sirocco! Is there a Richter Scale for south-easters? Should we invent one?)

So that’s where my Euro went—drowned along with all those other millions of Euros—my one Euro of shame for the members of a political establishment who are incapable of making decisions, unless it’s the decision to line their own pockets without the slightest restraint and to pay their pals back by making sure they get rich, too.

I was just about to send off my one-Euro solidarity SMS, and then I heard them bragging on the Tg1 newscast about the exceptional audience shares they’d been receiving during their live broadcasts from the earthquake zone. Since I also pay for the public television service with my annual license fee, my feeling is that I’m already doing them a favor if I don’t ask for my money back after hearing an atrocity like that.


I won’t donate a dime for the towns ravaged by the earthquake. And I don’t want anyone else’s money if something should happen to me. What I want is an efficient national government, one in which it isn’t only the craftiest and the slipperiest who run things. And since I already know that nothing like that is going to come to pass, I also believe that the earthquake will turn into a great big lottery landslide for politicians. Now they all have the perfect excuse not to talk about anything else. Now no one can criticize the government or the majority political party (which is all of them, even the ones in the opposition), because there’s the earthquake to think about. Just as with 9/11, the earthquake and the situation in the Abruzzo are going to be the front that is used to justify anything and everything.

Thousands of resources are wasted in this country every day. If only it truly wanted to, the national government knows where it could get the money to help the earthquake refugees: by freezing politicians’ salaries for a year, or the salaries of the “super managers”; by combining the next European parliamentary elections with the upcoming referendum, rather than funding two national elections. Those are the first ideas that come to mind. Every time I think of something else, I’m that much more enraged.

I’m not going to donate a dime. Instead, I’m giving the best help I can: my outrage, my indignation. In these difficult days, I want to assert my right as an Italian to live in a house that is safe. And the rage welling up inside me turns to tears when I hear people say “something like this would never have happened in Japan,” as if the Japanese had discovered something new, as if know-how was the exclusive province of the Land of the Rising Sun. Every engineering student with a freshly printed university degree understands how a building ought to be constructed. What happens is that they’re made to forget as they exercise their profession.

I cry in my rage because it is always the poorest people who die, and in the televised pandemonium there’s not even one single poet with the greatness of a Pasolini to tell us how things really are, to gather together the pain and anguish of the least among us. This country has killed all of them, all the poets, or else it's allowed them to die of boredom.

But today, here, I feel Italian, a poor man among poor men and women, and I demand the right to have my say.

In the end, just the way that nature does when it causes the earth to move.

---

[1] Life in Italy came to a halt on June 10, 1981, when, for some 60 hours, live television broadcasts from Vermicino (near Rome), tracked superman efforts to free a six-year-old boy, Alfredo Rampi, who had fallen 180 feet into an uncovered artesian well. The events were followed by some 21 million Italians and, when the rescue efforts proved futile, the entire nation was plunged into mourning.

[2] Milano 2 is a planned “new town” or “supercondo” community in Segrate, in the suburbs of Milan , built and financed in the 1970s by firms owned by Silvio Berlusconi. The built-in TV network installed throughout Milano 2 helped Berlusconi launch his television empire as well, and he used his own television channels to market Milano 2 to upper-middle-class families. One of Milano 2’s features is an artificial lake, frequently used as a location for shooting TV programs and commercials.

[3] Brooklyn “the chewing gum with the bridge on the package,” was introduced in Italy in 1969. The massive advertising campaign that followed earned its producer, the Perfetti Van Melle group, a market share of 90%.

[4] The allusion here is to the fact that, following the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia, reconstruction and repair efforts quickly became a lucrative business opportunity for organized crime, which controlled contractors and contracts, supplies and suppliers, etc. An article in the 15 April 2009 The Independent contains more background on what took place.

All is Well

Don't worry: The earthquake zone in and around L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo, is almost 450 km south of us. We're just fine. Dolce Metà’s family is closer to the earthquake area, but only slightly, so they're out of danger as well.

The situation down there is about as tragic as things can get. The only good news is that emergency and rescue crews appear to have shown up almost literally within minutes of the quake and are continuing to do a fine job -- rescues of this type are one of the situations in which Italy truly shines.

The bad news is that the number of deaths keeps rising and there are so many injured that hospitals are completely overwhelmed. As of this morning, April 7th, the number of homeless had been "downgraded" to 17,000 (from more than 100,000) and temporary shelter (in hotels, mostly, but there are tent cities in each of the affected towns) had been arranged. All of these figures change constantly, however.

If you don't read Italian, there is decent coverage in the New York Times. Ironically, we've been getting most of our news from them and from Italian TV, because Italian newspaper internet sites are so overwhelmed with hits that the connection isn't reliable.

There are some images here, if you can get through:

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/terremoto-alto/1.html

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/terremoto-arte/1.html

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/terremoto-risveglio/1.html

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/onna-disastro/1.html.

If you're of a mind to donate, your local Catholic diocese should know something, since non-governmental aid apparently is being organized through the Church.

It's impossible not to sense the anxiety and sadness that's in the air but, I repeat -- we're not affected and we're fine. Spare a thought or a prayer for the people in the Abruzzo, because they are truly suffering. And get your home disaster kit up to date.

Charlotte's Webs

We woke this morning to find dozens of small spider webs woven among the branches of the jasmine bush. The fog had come in just before dawn and left the webs dripping with dew. A few hours later, the dew was gone and so were most of the spiders. Did they attack one other and tear down the nests? After days and days of rain, in any case, it was a sight to lift our spirits.

Nor was that all. Here's our first gardenia of the season. Against all odds, it bloomed indoors (the weather is still too unpredictable to trust the gardenia outdoors) with the help of a "gro-lite" (in our case, that's just a plain, old energy-saving bulb).

Strano Bedfellow

Just over a year back, as you may recall, I described the carefree antics of some of Italy’s parliamentarians in the run up to and just after the no-confidence vote that brought down the barely-two-year-old government of Romano Prodi. (See “Chaos Theory.”)

One of the most delighted campers during the extremely dignified and spontaneous outpouring of political bile enthusiasm on the floor of the Senate was Antonino “Nino” Strano, then a Senator with the National Alliance (one of the many illegitimate descendants of the Fascist party, which began ramifying the minute WWII was officially over).

Nino lost his job during last year’s elections, but Silvio “Boss Hogg” Berlusconi wasted no time in nominating Strano as a candidate for the European Parliament (elections will take place later this year). It may be worth noting that the Italian delegation to the European Parliament is something of a laughing stock: its members have distinguished themselves by having the lowest rate of attendance of any country, by earning the highest salaries (approximately $21,000 per month, plus a per diem and a staff allotment, whether or not they have a staff), and by staying in office for the least amount of time (Italian politicians use the European Parliament as a kind of a holding pen where they can earn a lot of money while they wait for one of their cronies to find them a better sistemazione).

Strano, in light of his new-found respectability as a MEP candidate, has recently begun menacing bloggers and facebookers for circulating the video that you can see below, which is just one of the pleasures of making it available to you. (Charles Lambert gets the credit for finding this little gem and for starting a virtuous catena di Sant'Antonio—and if there’s no reward in heaven for helping others learn what a scum Strano is, there truly is no God).

I consider it mildly interesting that Strano, whom you can hear screaming, among other things, “checca squallida” (sleazy queer) and “frocio” (faggot), is, according to some sources, gay himself. (What? Did the casual, Fag Flag drape of his cherry-red sweater give him away?) Mildly interesting because finding closeted, self-hating, right-wing fags in electoral politics is about as rare as coming upon rednecks at a demolition derby.

In any case, here’s the video. You can view it on Youtube (assuming Strano hasn’t succeeded in making them pull it), which should be the top video, If it should be unavailable, I have a downloaded copy, which I'd be glad to send to you.

The video is, inexplicably, in Italian, German, and English, so there's a little something for almost anyone. For those who don't have any Italian, though, here are a couple of highlights: At a certain point, Strano explains why the director, Franco Zeffirelli, thanked him in the end credits of Zeffirelli's 1993 film, Storia di una Capinera (released in English as Sparrow).

In January of this year, Zeffirelli, who is an Italian senator (since 1996 with Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party), finally confirmed what "everyone knew" and came out in an interview with the Italian magazine, Libero. One might have been surprised only because Zeffirelli has repeatedly announced his support for the draconian and homophobic statements of the Catholic Church (see above, under "right-wing politics, self-hating homos in").

So let's tie all the strings together. The protagonist in Storia di una Capinera is also named "Nino," but Strano wanted to make it clear that his relationship with Zeffirelli was a matter of nothing more than an affectionate and "serene" friendship (a euphemism for "we weren't doing it"); and, by the way, that he was on the verge of nominating Zeffirelli to a position as a "Senator for Life." (The nomination didn't take, but it wouldn't be Italy if one hand didn't ... you know.)

Later in the vid, Strano insists that he has always demonstrated the greatest openness toward the "homosexual world," which, "as a confirmed heterosexual," he respects. (That's despite throwing around words like "sleazy queen" on the floor of the Senate.) And I trust that clears things up.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Pane

Persistence pays. Or so one is told.

It took many weeks, about four kilos of flour, and five tries (two of which were certifiable disasters), but we've apparently turned the corner on bread.

Apart from the "stegosaurus" shape (we still have to work a little on forming the dough at the final stage), this was the first loaf that both tasted good and was genuinely recognizable as bread. (As an aside, I'll add that I find the shape quite charming and casereccio, though I realize it wouldn't precisely fall within the canons of current ISO standards for "cereals, pulses, and derived products.")

Yeast, frankly, remains an unfathomable mystery to me; I'd like to be making "natural yeast," but other than creating a slurry that smells a lot like a bar, our efforts have yet to result in anything that actually causes bread dough to rise. So, at least for the time being, we're still dependendent upon the yeast you buy in little gray blocks at the store.

Meanwhile, the cabalistic and recondite language employed on most bread-making web sites remains largely impenetrable (plus, bread recipes seem to be guarded like the Enigma code -- strange, indeed, for a foodstuff that has, in the main, no more than four ingredients).

For the home economists among you (and don't try to pretend I was the only boy who plotted a way to get into home economics and out of phys ed; the compromise was typing, and I suppose one could say, in a way, that I owe my livelihood to the exacting ministrations of Mrs. Pietroscewski): It is just barely possible to make a kilo of bread for less than what it costs to buy one in the store (decent bread, I mean: the IperCoop offers something at a Euro a kilo that I wouldn't even use for bread crumbs); but it isn't really possible to make pasta for less.

Clearly, it depends what kind of pasta: home-made tortellini can go for somewhere between €22-26 per kilo, so it's obviously cheaper to make than to buy. On the other hand, the day I start spending my days making tortellini will be the day I win the lottery and can officially abandon the excruciating pain utter joy of a career as a translator.

Conversely, a kilo of decent fresh (not dried) tagliatelli o maltagliati can be had for about what it would cost to make them at home (factoring in electricity but factoring out labor). If we're talking dried pasta, there's no comparison: industrial producers like Barilla and DeCecco churn them out at prices so low that you couldn't afford not to buy them, if your budget was really squeaky tight.

We may get to that point (I have nightmares about subsisting on spaghetti and salt), but for the moment we're enjoying playing at "artisan cooking." It's as much fun as you can have indoors with your clothes on.

Sanremata 2009 - Uscite Discografiche

Sanremata 2009 – from the blog “Liberidea”.
Republished by kind permission of the author, Giuseppe Iacobaci.

(Stay tuned for a translation in English!)

Uscite discografiche

Come ben ci insegna l'esperienza di questi giorni, giudicare una canzone dal titolo è una cosa sciocca e superficiale...

Abbiamo avuto in anteprima esclusiva la pregnante tracklist del nuovo album di un noto artista sanremese, ma prima di pubblicarla abbiamo richiesto, onde evitare sciocche polemiche superficiali, che ogni traccia fosse accompagnata da un breve commento da parte del noto musicista. Eccola qui:

1. Ambrogio era gay. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva il famoso Froids, non abbiamo niente contro i froci e comunque si può benissimo guarire. E comunque siete tutti scemi, la canzone è una cosa poetica che non parla di tutti i froci ma di un frocio specifico che è guarito, non è che guariscono tutti, questo lo so pure io; pure io sono stato fr... gay per un sei sette mesi ma poi sono guarito, quindi non è possibile che sono intollerante, io auguro a tutti di guarire e tornare normali come è successo a me e adesso mi piace la patonza e sono felice! No, davvero, lo auguro a tutti, di guarire, con grande simpatia e tolleranza: seriamente, anche esteticamente, c'è paragone fra la patonza e la minchia? Su, lo so, è colpa della mamma, vi è stata troppo col fiato sul collo, ma fate tutti uno sforzo e guarite, dai. Volevo dire solo questo. Ma voi giudicate dalla copertina e non avete capito niente, ma sapete che vi dico? In fondo io sono superiore e vi schifo tutti. Sì, sì, continuate, continuate, ha ha ha ha. Non vi sento, non vi sento, non vi sento!!

2. Quel ladro d'un ebreo. Questa canzone lo so già che porterà tante polemiche che io non volevo. Come diceva il famoso Scecspìr, io non ci ho niente contro gli ebrei, ma giuro che mi è capitato di conoscerne uno che era un ladro, ma ladro! Perciò la canzone sarà fraintesa di sicuro ma è poesia, non parla di tutti gli ebrei ma di un ebreo specifico che è un gran ladro e pure figlio di mignotta ebrea per giunta. Non strumentalizziamo ora, io sono solo un cantante, non è che sto dicendo che tutte le mignotte sono ebree né che tutte le ebree sono mignotte, ma tu pensa la sventura di essere le due cose contemporaneamente! E questa qui era così, mignotta e ebrea e con un figlio ladro ed ebreo per giunta. Specificamente, dico.

3. Puttana Eva. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva il famoso Danbràun, non abbiamo niente contro le puttane che anzi fanno un servizio alla comunità e spesso anche a me, anche se i prezzi sono troppo alti, e così siccome sono un musicista vario mi sono detto, devo fare un brano gèzz su questa cosa. C'era questa specifica puttana che si chiamava Eva, e anche non era ebrea (che poi sono uno tollerante) mi ha ispirato poeticamente questa canzone incompresa sui prezzi alti. Ma non è che adesso tutte quelle che si chiamano Eva se la prendono con me, non strumentalizziamo: ci sono Eve puttane e Eve no, questo va detto, visto che non lo capite da soli ve l'ho detto chiaro e tondo e chiudiamola lì.

4. Appendiamoli. È una canzone coraggiosa sugli stupratori e gli assassini. Io dico: appendiamoli. Una bella corda e li appendiamo, così non lo fanno più. Basta con i fraintendimenti, su questo siamo tutti d'accordo. E comunque la canzone non parla di tutti gli stupratori e assassini ma pure di qualche ladro, specie se ebreo, ed eventualmente pure di qualche frocio, ma di froci specifici che non vogliono guarire, non è che poi guariscono tutti, e allora, poeticamente parlando, appendiamoli! Non vorrei però che questa cosa poi venisse strumentalizzata, io sono solo un cantante e racconto delle storie, non è che ho delle idee, anzi sono pure contro la pena di morte, però intanto uno
li appende, poi quello che succede succede.

5. Questa cazzo di minestra. In questa coraggiosa canzone prendo finalmente le difese degli uomini che tornano a casa da lavorare e non trovano la minestra pronta. Anzi, di un uomo specifico, e una specifica minestra. Il ritornello, cantato con la voce bella grattata e sofferta fatta da me nel compiuter del mio amico Cecco, dice: "Questa hazzo di minestra l'è miha pronta, la stiamo miha aspettando che fiorisca la zucchina? Lo vo' hapi' he dopo una giornata di lavoro uno smonta/ e trova te holle manimmano e piagnùholi pure, hretina?" Però basta con i fraintendimenti, io sono solo un cantante e sto solo raccontando una storia. Come diceva il famoso Pinkfloi non abbiamo niente contro le minestre, però le mogli un po' rompono il cazzo; ma voi tanto giudicate solo dalla copertina e strumentalizzate le polemiche come sempre! Tanto non vi sento, non vi sento.

6. Questi cazzo di cinesi. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva Stivenking, non abbiamo niente contro i cinesi, basta che però non si mettono lì ad aprire tutti sti negozi con queste scritte che non si capisce un cazzo, magari c'è scritto vaffanculo italiani e tu non lo sai e ci vai a comprare la magliettina e quelli ridono tra loro e parlano cinese senza che li capisci. E come dico nel ritornello, "E puoi contarli anche per mesi, ma poi cazzo, si potrà sapere cazzo, quanti cazzo, sono questi cazzo di cinesi?" Oooooh, ma siete svegli o cosaaaa? La piantiamo con le polemiche? Io sono soltanto un cantante, sto raccontando una storia e basta, e il titolo è chiarissimo, parlo di questi cazzo di cinesi, non tutti quanti, tipo chessò, quelli che stanno in Cina a me non mi hanno fatto niente. Ho detto questi cazzo di cinesi, questi qui, non tutti quanti i cinesi, capito? La vogliamo finire con questi fraintendimenti e strumentalizzazioni?

7. Maremma bucaiola. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva il filosofo Henghel, a volte una maremma può anche essere bucaiola, e non bisogna nascondersi dietro a una fettina di prosciutto fingendo di non vedere queste cose che tanto sono sotto gli occhi di tutti; ora i toscani so che stanno facendo un corteo contro di me organizzato dal mio manager, ma io queste polemiche strumentalizzate non le sopporto, c'è bisogno che lo dica o siete tutti scemi? E allora ve lo dico, non mi riferisco alla Maremma Toscana, ma a una specifica maremma che preferisco non nominare per turbare gli animi, ma vi assicuro che l'ho vista personalmente ed è bucaiola. So che questa cosa produrrà delle polemiche strumentalizzate, perché sono un portatore sano di polemiche, ma io sono solo un cantante, è solo poesia e tanto potete parlare quanto volete tanto non vi sento. Però comprate il mio disco, guardate che bella copertina, l'ho fatta io, è fantastico, vero?

8. Moreno lo stupratore romeno. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva lo scrittore, quello lì, Grignam, Grisciam, quello lì, vah, non abbiamo niente contro gli stupratori, basta che però non siano romeni. Voglio dire, capita a tutti di essere stupratori nella vita, io per sei o sette mesi sono stato stupratore ma poi ho incontrato questa persona speciale e sono guarito e adesso stupro solo lei, ma solo un pochino. Invece se uno è romeno è più grave, perché non puoi essere romeno solo per sei sette mesi e poi guarire. Aspettate, comunque io sto parlando di uno specifico romeno, non di tutti i romeni. Magari quel romeno lì non può guarire, gli altri magari invece sì, io sono solo un cantante e non lo so, racconto solo storie, ma questa cosa la volevo dire per dare liberamente voce a tutti quelli che liberamente la pensano come me. Però scusa tu mettiti nei panni di un padre, ecco. Un padre specifico, dico. So che questa cosa produrrà delle polemiche strumentalizzate ma tanto io non ci sento. Ma l'avete vista la copertina che bella? Compràtelo, il mio disco, dai, dai, dai!

9. Io ti punirò. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Questa canzone d'amore parla in maniera poetica dell'amore di uno specifico uomo verso una specifica donna e ha aspettato con pazienza che si laureasse e ora se la vuole pure sposare, ma la specifica donna però vuole iniziare una carriera da avvocato e sarebbe pure disposta a fargli pure le pulizie e cucinare e cambiare i pannolini ai bimbi come tutte le mogli, però vuole fare pure l'avvocato, ma lui è poco persuaso, le avvocatesse stanno negli uffici con gli avvocati, e poi ci sono i giudici, tutti questi maschi intorno che gli ronzano e passano e urtano, e urta oggi e scusa domani e parla, e guarda, e un caffè, e un aperitivo che ci fa, e un happy hour in fondo che cos'è, e uno poi si rompe pure un po' il cazzo, e giustamente. Allora poeticamente io mi sono immaginato nei panni di questo specifico uomo che vede questa specifica donna, non tutte ma lei proprio specifica, e la vede con quel tailleur grigio serio serio il primo giorno di lavoro e le grida in preda alla rabbia tutto il suo amore: "Io ti spoglierò / di quel tuo paltò / donna di successo che ti credi superiore / sei grigia come un cesso ma sarò il tuo punitore / oh, sì, io ti punirò / per amore, ti punirò". Certamente la cosa sarà fraintesa e strumentalizzata, ha ha ha ha, come se io ce l'avessi con tutte le donne in carriera! Ma non è vero, è solo con quella lì specifica che me la prendo.

10. Mario era normale. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva il famoso coso, Schumacher, non abbiamo niente contro gli etero. Questa canzone poetica fraintesa e strumentalizzata che ho scritto su richiesta dell'arci-etero per fare par condicio con l'altra, è proprio tutta all'opposto e dimostra come sono aperto a tutti i messaggi e moderno. Parla specificamente di uno specifico etero che a differenza dell'altro dell'altra canzone invece lui è rimasto etero perché gli stava bene così e non aveva bisogno di guarire (e voglio dire, mi pare ovvio, cioè, voi ditemi se è normale uno che gli piace Bondi o uno che gli piace la Ferilli). Questo brano a differenza dell'altro dimostra che per me, uno, se è felice, può pure restare com'è. Il testo dice: "Mario era normale / e pure un po' maiale / girava ogni canale / in cerca di maiale/ Mario era felice / un po' meno Beatrice / lasciava a casa la moje / e annava a cerca' troje". Insomma, una canzone d'amore.

11. Bonus track: Marcella era un po' mignottella. Basta con i fraintendimenti. Come diceva il grande Patchans, questa è soltanto la storia di una singola persona, una ragazza che la sera usciva con i jeans attillati e le minigonne e poi veniva stuprata, ma poi capiva di aver sbagliato e si chiudeva in casa a pregare per tutto il resto della vita, e spiego bene questa cosa profonda e poetica nel monologo del brano ("ero molto bella / e a causa dell'infanzia disagiata / a far la puttanella ormai c'ero portata/ capitemi però mi son pentita / e non giro più svestita / la donna discinta / facilmente resta incinta / ha fatto bene quell'omone / a insegnarmi la lezione / come diceva froid da qualche parte / il corpo nudo è un'arte / ma l'arte va nascosta o ti fai la bua / sennò so' cazzi tua, l'hai fatto apposta"). Insomma, un messaggio di speranza per tutte le ragazze svergognate che mostrano l'insert coin da questi jeans a vita bassa: si può guarire! Ora io non voglio lanciare polemiche, io sono solo un cantante e non lo so cosa vuol dire tutto questo, io non capisco un cazzo, io viaggio solamente in treno e quello che sento lo racconto, le mie canzoni nascono tutte da chiacchierate nei treni (tanto per fare qualche titolo dal mio prossimo album: "So' le otto e ancora stamo a Chiavari", "È occupato questo", "Chiamate il capotreno c'è un marocchino senza biglietto", "Cazzo la latrina è intasata", "Che dite, abbassamo 'e cucciette?") ma questa cosa la volevo dire per dare liberamente voce a tutti quelli che liberamente sono a favore dello stupro e questa è libertà del pensiero, stiamo in democrazzìa. Voi criticatemi, ma tanto io non ci sento. Ma l'avete vista la copertina che bella? L'ho fatto io, è il mio disco, si chiama "Pallonaro di mestiere." Compràtelo, dai, dai, dai.

Something about this topic makes it impossible to discuss...

If you’re sick to death of Povia, “Luca Era Gay,” and reconstituted homosexuals, believe me: I’m with you. The good news is that this is my last post on Povia. The less good news is that it’s going to be a long one.

And that’s because most of what’s being said about Povia, about his song, and about the responses and the re-re-re-sponses thereto is utter bloody nonsense. The kind of utter bloody nonsense that leaves you with the desire to execute your television and unlearn how to read. The kind of utter bloody nonsense that makes you think you must be from another planet, because the people around you are clearly not of your species.

The kind of utter bloody nonsense that, if there were alarms that went off when the level of bullshit reached dangerous levels, the way they do for smog in Beijing, the sirens would have been wailing for days.

Unfortunately, there’s still no face mask to protect you from stupidity. Or from homophobia.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, so let’s get right to it. If you’re not up to speed (lucky you), you might want to review your CliffsNotes: Behind This Darkness, Nothing (Part 1): Out & In with Roberto Bolle; Luca Era Gay - Luca Once Was Gay - Povia; and Asking People at the Stadium Whether They Think Soccer is Boring - Povia on Homosex.

“(‘Luca era gay’) isn’t making any kind of general comment—it’s just one person’s story.” (Massimiliano Varrese, the actor who will play “Luca” in the video version of Povia’s song.)

Now, let’s be clear: Massimiliano Varrese is serious eye candy. A comment like that, however, merely demonstrates why “B” actors should keep their mouths shut when it comes to social issues they don’t understand.

Each year, a wide variety of songs are presented at the now fifty-nine-year-old Sanremo Festival of Italian Song. Some are meant to be funny, some are meant to make you dance, and some (most of them) rely on good, old-fashioned cheap sentiment (such as the one that more-or-less launched Povia’s career in 2005, “Quando i bambini fanno ‘Ooh!’” [“When Children Say “Ooh!”], an inoffensive puff piece about how adorable kids are).

Every year, however, performers also bring “social issue” songs to Sanremo—such as this year’s “can’t we all just get along” plea for racial harmony, “L’Opportunità,” performed by singer/songwriters Pupo, Paolo Belli, and Youssou N’dour (“Welcome my unknown friend ... let’s experience our differences as an opportunity”); or Fabrizio Moro’s 2007 “youth division” winner at Sanremo, “Pensa,” a song that encouraged resistance to the mafia.

Such songs aren’t presented simply because they intend to “tell an individual story” that “can’t be generalized”; they’re there to make a point regarding specific social phenomena (in fact, “L’Opportunità” comes at a time when Italy is enacting some of the most draconian anti-immigrant measures since Fascism).

“Luca Era Gay” is exactly that kind of song. To insist otherwise is so intellectually impoverished and so willfully ignorant that one can only be astonished by the gallons of gall it takes to do so.

If Povia had had the courage to tell interviewers that he intended to use his time at Sanremo to issue a warning about the danger that homosexuality poses for society and the family, you could have an ounce of respect for him. It’s a benighted position, but at least it’s honest.

Instead, he chose to hide behind the cowardly and moronic cover story of wanting to relate what a stranger "happened" to tell him one day on a train. I don’t know why Povia isn’t writhing in embarrassment, but one gets the sense that shame is not an emotion he’s familiar with.

Speaking of cover stories: Massimiliano Varrese wants to make clear that he’s not at all worried that people will think he’s gay, just because he’s playing Luca in the video. “The paparazzi have photographed me so many times with girls that I don’t think my sexual identity is in any doubt,” he told the internet publication, “Sorrisi e Canzoni TV.”

I don’t even need to say it, right?

Which brings us to the corollary: “It’s just a song. I don’t understand why it’s so controversial.”

If you don’t understand why the song is so controversial, or why so many people consider it damaging and insulting, then sit down and shut up. You don’t have anything intelligent to say on the subject.

It’s fine with me if people like the song or don't consider its impact as perfidious as I do. But someone who says “I don’t understand,” is either brain-injured or means something else. Something else like: “I don’t actually care.” “I consider the issue trivial.” “I can’t be bothered to empathize.”

I repeat. Love the song if you like. But please don’t say you “don’t understand" why it’s controversial. If you don’t, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, not proud of your indomitable and independent spirit.

The point here (and those of you who already have a keen grasp of the obvious can skip ahead) is context. And context, as we know, is everything.

Italy is a country where national politicians regularly bandy about words like “butt fucker” and “faggot.” Where the Minister of Equal Opportunities insists that “the question of equality in the matter of same-sex unions is a false problem.” Where parents stab or beat their gay or lesbian children and then defend themselves saying it was a matter of “family honor.” Where the mayor of Milan, Italy’s most international city, refuses to allow the city to sponsor the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and where the mayor of Rome refuses to allow the city to sponsor any of the events associated with the annual Gay Pride celebration, one of the largest in Europe. Where there are virtually no gay characters on television; where you can count the number of openly gay public figures on the fingers of about one-and-a-half hands. Where the Pope refuses to support a UN declaration in support of the decriminalization of homosexuality (because he doesn’t want to discriminate against those countries where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or death) and, generally speaking, can’t stop raving about homosexuality.

In other words, a country in which public discourse around homosexuality has a certain, let’s call it, slant. And where the counter-response to all of the above is, almost always, silence.

(Sure, people of good conscience are horrified and ashamed. But I’m referring to a proportionate response, literally “equi-valent,” in analogous if not identical venues and with the same number of kilowatts.)

And then someone appears on a nationally televised program watched by one Italian in four, and sings a song in which homosexual relationships are depicted as sordid and criminal, the result of trauma and family misery, and in which heterosexuality provides the escape from that misery and the resolution of that trauma.

And then he sings it again every night for three more nights, and in the meantime he gives interviews to journalists in which he continues to expand on his view that “telling a story about a person who managed to get out of homosexuality” offers a “message of hope.” (Ah, a message of hope? But didn’t he say the song had no message—that it was just “one person’s story”?)

As a response to which, various hugely disorganized gay-rights organizations in Italy snark among themselves, give confusing and conflicting interviews to the media, and seem, with few exceptions, petulant, irrational, and cowed.

Let me make it personal: This weekend, my partner is home visiting his family. On Friday night, like a significant chunk of Italian families, they gathered around the TV to watch Sanremo. And he wound up sitting there, listening to “Luca Era Gay,” next to his mother, who believes that what the song says is true—not true about “Luca,” but true in general. She believes that my partner’s relationship with me results from emotional confusion and represents a psychological difficulty of some sort. She believes he could be heterosexual if he’d only “give a girl a chance.” (And, by the way, doesn’t he want to call his ex-girlfriend this weekend while he’s home?) She believed it anyway, but now she’s seen a nice young man sing about it at the Sanremo Festival and she thinks, “It’s not just my opinion—it’s the validated truth.”

That’s the context in which “Luca Era Gay” appears. In which a mother who receives almost literally no positive information about homosexuality from television and newspapers is suddenly exposed, via the most mainstream and impeccable of sources, to Povia’s “message of hope.”

Now. Does anyone still not understand why the song is controversial?

Or what would happen if we shifted the context slightly? In recent weeks, Rome (and, to an extent, all of Italy) has been reeling after a series of particularly hideous rapes in and around the city. So let’s suppose Povia had decided to take a song to Sanremo that dealt with rape. A song told from the point of view of Lucia (let’s call her), who realizes, after she’s raped, that it really was all her fault: She used to go out by herself to after-hours nightclubs, she hung around with disreputable guys, she wore skimpy skirts and revealing T-shirts, she drank and took drugs. After the rape, though, she turned over a new leaf. She gave up all that rebellion in favor of nice, traditional family values. Now she’s married and happy. And it was all thanks to the rapist.

Women’s groups (and, I would hope, not solely women’s groups) would be in the streets demanding an apology and a retraction from the singer, the presenters of the Sanremo Festival, and the network. (And don’t fool yourself that a lot of Italians don’t believe that the women attacked in Rome had it coming.)

But wouldn't that also just be one woman’s story? A personal story? Not something you could generalize?

Is there still anyone idiot enough to argue that Povia’s song isn't delivering a message? Is there anyone still pinheaded enough to try to insist that “Luca Era Gay” appears in some sort of cultural vacuum?

Other than Povia himself, I mean?

Free speech.

The related attempt, meanwhile, to defend “Luca Era Gay” on the basis of "free speech" is one of the most cynical and manipulative tools of the pro-Povia propaganda machine.

In fact, essentially no one has ever actually suggested that Povia should have been censored or that he didn’t have the “right” to sing his song. Criticism of his (feeble) reasoning, of his homophobia, of the errors of fact in the song, of the timing of the performance, of the song’s message—those do not constitute censorship.

What people like Povia (who almost always seem to be right-wingers—sorry, but it’s true) always forget is that having the “right” to say what you like does not automatically confer upon you a privilege—that is, the privilege of 100% approbation.

The right to sing “Luca Era Gay” (if it is a right) doesn’t give Povia the right to be free from criticism. It doesn’t give him the right to go around whinging that the negative responses to his song are, in fact, an attack on the right itself and not on the content of the expression.

And it’s totally slimy to imply otherwise.

It’s worth remembering the analogy rendered famous by the U.S. Supreme Court in discussing this precise issue. Suppose you go into a crowded theatre and scream “Fire!” There isn’t one, but you do it anyway. As a result, people panic; injuries result. You were just expressing your sense of humor, you say; anyway, your speech is a protected right.

No, it isn't, says the Court, which understands something about context. Because free speech, like all democratic rights, is a two-edge sword: it’s a right and an obligation at the same time. In other words, it’s never entirely free, if free means “without consequences.” The more unpopular the speech is, in fact, the more it costs. If your ass can’t cover the checks you write with your big, free mouth, then you’d better shut up.

And I’m just going to finish up by discussing two of the most loathsome lies perpetuated (and perpetrated) by “Luca Era Gay” and by the way the resulting controversy is being handled by the media in Italy.

“There were people who told me, ‘It’s natural,’ but I studied Freud and he didn’t see it that way.” (Povia, “Luca Era Gay”)

Well yes, actually, he did.

Freud (he’s the guy who floated the concept that all human beings were innately bisexual, remember?) believed homosexuality to be entirely natural. But let’s take a minute to examine the concept, because what becomes blatantly obvious is that what Christers like Povia mean by natural and what Freud meant by natural and what I mean by natural are not the same thing.

The problem nowadays is that all conversation regarding “nature” almost instantly runs aground on the “If God had meant for two men to be together, he’d have created Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve” argument.

That’s because there is simply no way to argue that homosexuality is not biologically, ecologically, elementally natural, not solely in humans but among many other animals. If you don’t like homosexuality, that’s a datum you’d rather ignore, so you skip over to theological or “moral” arguments regarding what is “natural,” which is what Povia does in his song: he’s not interested (he says out of one side of his mouth) in science or biology (except when it’s helpful to his argument to twist a more-or-less scientific interpretation, as he does with Freud); he’s talking about “God’s laws.”

And we can argue for approximately ever about what God considers natural and “correct” and no one can ever be fully right because God is inscrutable and that, Babies, explains in a nutshell a couple of thousand years of history in which human beings have tortured and slaughtered one another by the literal billions because God told them to.

If you’re Charles Manson and God tells you to, you’re a psychopathic murderer. If you’re the Pope and God tells you to, it’s the Holy Inquisition.

While I’m on the subject, here’s a question I’d like answered: If homosex is such a big, hairy deal and if even thinking about it means that you’re going Straight to Hell to be Tormented for All Eternity by Demons with Red-Hot Meat Rakes, how come the Ten Commandments doesn’t mention it? OK, maybe it was on that other tablet, the one Moses dropped. A whole tablet, written with God’s very own finger, in which he very clearly tells us not to touch each other there. Maybe.

Or what about Jesus? He had half the friggin’ Bible to work with, and He didn’t manage to say one single word about the most heinous and unnatural sin known to humankind? I know he was distracted, what with the Sadducees, and the walking on water, and the wandering, but that’s more than just forgetfulness, I’d say. I hope God gave him a good talking to later when the two of them had a chance to sit down with the H.S for the big “assuming-human-form-and-establishing-a-new-religion” wrap-up session.

Of course, one might also point in passing out that God must have created Adam and Steve—because where else did they come from? I mean, was homosexuality imported from some other planet? Except God created the planets, too, right? Anyway, I digress.

The fact that Adam and Steve didn’t make it into the Bible is hardly their fault. Blame it on heterosexist scribes. In any case, since Adam and Steve have been around just slightly less time than Adam and Eve, they’re about as natural as they could possibly be.

In the end, what people like Povia mean by “natural” is that homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality. And there I’m 100% in agreement.

For those interested, by the way, I came across a remarkable manuscript image of the letter Freud wrote in 1935 to an American mother worried that her son was gay. (Click on the image to see a large version of the entire letter.)

In it, Freud summed up what a career in psychoanalysis had taught him:

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.... By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it.... What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed....

Povia considers himself an expert on Freud, but apparently he missed this letter.

Too bad for Luca that he met Povia on the train and not Freud.

“Born Gay”

~~ Povia: “No one is born gay. You become gay because of who you spend time with, what you’re taught as a child.” ~~ Iva Zanicchi (2009 Sanremo contestant and member of the European Parliament): “If you’re born homosexual—it’s not an illness, it’s your condition—and you’re gay your whole life.”

God bless Iva Zanicchi for trying to help, but here’s one thing Povia and I agree on: I don’t believe anyone is born gay.

I also don’t believe anyone is born heterosexual.

What I believe is that we’re born with the capacity to have and to deploy a sexuality, that we are imbued with libidinal energy that can (in Freud’s poetic image) “fill up” or “occupy” objects—lots of them, and even different ones over time. Not unlike the way we’re born with the capacity for language, though whether we speak Mandarin or Xhosa or Russian is, so to say, an accident of upbringing. To that extent, I'm much more of a Freudian than Povia is.

But the fact of the matter is that no one knows—not me, not Povia, not the Pope, not Freud, not flotillas of endocrinologists and geneticists and pediatricians. And it doesn’t look we’re going to know any time soon.

So the really interesting question becomes: What does it matter? How are the various positions being used in the service of other agendas (political, cultural, artistic, religious)?

To date, it strikes me that entirely too much of the commentary regarding “Luca Era Gay” has been derailed in the polemic over the unanswerable and reductionist question, “born or not born?” Even the exceedingly strange Italian gay writer, Walter Siti, got into the fray when he issued a statement “defending Povia” on the grounds that it wasn’t correct to say that people couldn’t change their sexual orientation—indeed, Siti asserted, it happened all the time. “We always have the capacity to cross the borders (of heterosexuality and homosexuality), either from one direction or the other, according to our personal psychology. It depends on thousands of factors, including mere chance,” Siti wrote. (One might best understand Siti’s views on homosexuality by comparing him to the late, great Quentin Crisp, if you can imagine Crisp stripped of all discernible traces of irony.)

Luxuria, meanwhile, the former MP who continues to be the go-to gal for journalists who want a queer-positive quote, put it this way:

(“Luca Era Gay”) is a nice song about science-fiction, because it isn’t as though you’re gay one morning, and then you wake up the next day and you aren’t anymore.... I continue to be of the belief that a popular, nationally televised program (like Sanremo) can do a great deal of good or a great deal of harm. There’s no question that the text of a song that conveys the idea that homosexuality is a sort of burden that you need to liberate yourself from isn’t so great because a teenager seeing Sanremo could get the idea that homosexuality was something that needed to be cured. If, in the interests of providing equal air time, they had Al Bano sing a song about being cured of heterosexuality, I’d be in favor. But the real problem is that we need to be cured of repression, we need to be cured of prejudice. The Italian mentality is opening up slightly, but rather than making giant leaps forward, we’re taking tiny little Geisha steps.

In the end, one is left asking why Povia is banging this particular drum—or, to stay with Luxuria’s metaphor, why he has insisted on donning this particular kimono. But perhaps there's a clue here: Almost four years ago, Povia gave an interview to the monthly magazine, Panorama, in which he said:

I had a gay phase, too. It was when I was 18 years old. It lasted seven months, and then I got over it. I even converted two of my friends who thought they were gay and now they’re married and they even have children.

In a later interview, he went even further: “My parents separated when I was little. I was left alone in an environment totally dominated by female figures. I played with dolls. Anybody who thinks you’re born gay is mistaken.”

So: Povia era gay or wasn’t he? Just as his song was about to debut at Sanremo in 2009, he issued a retraction: “I’ve never been gay,” he told the Italian weekly Oggi. “I told a reporter that story once, but really, I was talking a lot of nonsense in that interview.”

In fact, throughout the interview in question, Povia talks as though he’s high or drunk, offering up a series of hallucinogenic non sequiturs that clearly left the interviewer perplexed. But he says one little word at the beginning of the interview that I suspect explains this entire ruckus.

“Everybody thinks I’m a nice guy,” he said, “but really I’m trasgressivo.”

Now, “trasgressivo” is one of those overused Italian words that means everything from “I don’t always signal before I turn left” to “My sex life involves military uniforms and Cricetidae,” but it’s essentially similar to an equally overused English word: “nonconformist.”

Poor little Giuseppe. Artsy, bourgeois kid grows up in Milan, talented but maybe a bit of a sissy. Parents separated. Sister’s bulimic. Teaches himself to play the guitar and then lives the life of the singer-waiter, moving around Italy in search of restaurant jobs. Gets his first real break in 2005 when he’s already 33 but, between one thing and another, he’s not exactly zooming to the top of the charts with a bullet. When he isn’t invited to Sanremo in 2008, he launches a contentious campaign against that year’s musical director, accusing him of engaging in the “payola and political payback” that exclude small-record-label musicians from radio air time and from venues like Sanremo.

And through all of this, he really wants to be seen as trasgressivo.

Me, I’d have preferred it if he’d decided to use somebody else’s community as a marketing gimmick, but there you have it.

As of this writing, “Luca Era Gay” has less than 2% of the public vote on one internet poll site dedicated to predicting Sanremo winners, 10% on another and, on the perhaps-more-reliable Repubblica site, is tied for third place (with Patty Pravo) with 11% of the vote.

Half of me hopes Povia loses miserably, and half of me hopes he wins—just so we won't have to endure weeks of hearing about how he was robbed and censored and silenced by the communists. But whatever happens, I couldn't be happier that, come tomorrow morning, Sanremo will be over.

Povia era.

Asking People at the Stadium Whether They Think Soccer is Boring - Povia on Homosex

Two evenings ago, along with about fifteen million other people, I finally heard Povia’s “ex-gay” anthem, “Luca Era Gay” (Luca Once Was Gay) at the Sanremo Festival, the full text of which had been guarded like the whereabouts of Bin Laden up until about twelve hours before the festival began. (You can find my translation of the song here.)

I expected to find the song offensive and retrograde; I expected it to give aid and comfort to the Italian (but certainly not only) conviction that gay life is tragic and to shore up the popular fantasy (an especial favorite of the Catholic church) that a soi-disant gay man is merely a confused heterosexual who hasn’t yet come across the right woman. And I wasn’t disappointed.

To be sure, “Luca Era Gay” is a grubby and sick-minded rehearsal of popular clichés and of the discredited psychological theories of nearly a century ago: the “close-binding intimate” mother who is “morbidly jealous” of Luca’s female friends and begs her son never to get married; the absent, alcoholic father who has nothing to say to his son and who is probably cheating on his wife; the disturbed and guilt-ridden adolescent who is seduced by an older man and “goes with men” because he doesn’t want to “betray his mother.” It all ends happily, though: At a party, Luca meets a girl who “understands” him, allowing him finally to forgive his father (but not his mother, whom he indicates he never really loved), get married, and bring some more children into the world. Poor girl. Poor children.

It’s either a pulp novel from the 1950s (one of those with titles like Twilight Men or Love Among the Shadows) or else it’s a song presented in 2009 at a national music festival in Italy.

There’s a word for this in Italian, by the way (there’s a word for this in every language, I suspect, but let’s stay local): baggianata. Even if you don’t speak Italian, it’s almost onomatopoeic, but the word comes to us along the same road that gave us “babble” and “prattle,” so you get the picture.

As if the song weren’t twaddle on its own, there’s the fact that Povia has, for at least a monthbeen doing his level best to demonstrate that he is both (a) bigoted beyond repair and (b) desperate for attention. At first, he allowed as how the song was autobiographical, but on the night before Sanremo opened, he retracted that previous interview (had he had a heart-to-heart with Robert Bolle?), insisting that the idea for the song had actually come from a conversation with a guy he “met on the train.”

Yeah, let’s call it the train.

“I’ve never been gay,” Povia told the Italian weekly Oggi. “I told a reporter that story once, but really, I was talking a lot of nonsense in that interview.”

The day after the song debuted at Sanremo, Povia released a statement saying that he “had no intention of offending anyone.” He was just

“telling a story about a person who managed to get out of homosexuality and is finally happy, and I thought it was appropriate to spread this message of hope.... (A person might) think he loves (another man), but then he realizes he has to look within himself in order to recognize what love truly is, perhaps because he meets a woman who makes him feel like a real man and ... allows him to overcome a series of traumas that had sent him in a different, confused direction. So I’m asking people, once and for all, to knock it off: I don’t have anything against gays.... But I want to be free to sing about the healthy values that were taught to me in my family.”

Whew! Imagine what he might have said if he’d actually wanted to offend us.

At a rhetorical level, there’s great stuff here. Povia, like the Catholic Church, has learned the new rhetoric of homophobia: Now it’s the gays who are the bigots; now the gays are the ones who are intolerant. They’re trying to keep artists from singing about what they feel called to sing about. They want to censor the Sanremo Festival. They are (as Povia said in his post-Sanremo statement) “people who think they’re liberals or are in the thrall of communist chic.”

He’s just exercising artistic freedom. People who think the song is a (say it with me) baggianata don’t believe in democracy.

At this writing, we’re awaiting the opening of the third night of festival programming. “Luca Era Gay” has made it this far (frankly, the competition isn’t particularly stiff this year), and an increasingly smug Povia is continuing to give interviews in which he manages to convey all the smirking satisfaction of someone who thinks his side has already won the match.

Thus far, my new favorite is the one that appeared on the Repubblica site yesterday. An interviewer actually attempted to challenge Povia’s intellectually dishonest creative interpretation of scientific evidence regarding sexual orientation “change.”

“Have you had any cause to reflect on your position, given the numerous psychologists, sociologists, and other experts over the past several days who’ve said that this idea of changing one’s sexual orientation and becoming heterosexual isn’t consistent with....”

“Are they gay, these experts?” Povia wanted to know. "Because if they are, it's like me going to the stadium to ask people whether they think soccer is boring.”