talking about the sad Grillo thing of the other day, I expanded myself on the subject in an interesting discussion going on Blog from Italy, in case you were interested. So I am not going over it here. But it is interesting, though. I don't pretend to understand everything or that my interpretation of the facts is the right one... But I do see things like Grillo's v-day as key moments where the self-destructive instincts of the Italians give their best. Our imploding grotesque antique people. I know them instincts quite well. I have them in my blood type (type self-destruct). And isn't the title of this blog...? Etcetera.

Funny how blog celebrity Beppe Grillo commented yesterday the story of the couple of Erba who killed their neighbors, and by doing it he used the same, chief, well-tested and reassuring interpretation of the mainstream media about it. One wonders then, what a blog like his one is needed for if not, once again, for straightforward, hugely reassuring purposes.

(And obviously the only reason to remark this fact is that Beppe Grillo's blog is so fantastically popular. So far I took this as the most significant evidence of the unfortunate, blatant average backwardness of the italian blogland: not really for what Grillo writes, which is at worst trivial or predictable, but for the plebiscite of links and readers and comments that surrounds him : Plebiscites are such a boring, bad sign.)

In picture: Luigi Tenco few days before his death (1967)

Beppe Grillo, the most famous italian blogger and popular comedian, like most of us write on his blog like about everything. His blog is beppegrillo.it, but you already know that.

Recently a magistrate reopened the case for the death of the great italian folksinger Luigi Tenco, who allegedly killed himself in his hotel room in Sanremo forty years ago, and Grillo jumped on the case, publishing a letter from folksinger Gino Paoli (it's a folk story, yep). Here:
http://www.beppegrillo.it/2005/12/vedrai_che_camb.html
(You can read more on the reopening of Tenco's case here, and also consider the interview with folksinger Lucio Dalla. Both in italian, sorry about that).

Paoli's letter basically says: leave Tenco resting in his grave, justice in Italy sucks, we should not reopen this 40 years old case, there are more important things to do, etc. A nice bar-chatting nonsense, were completely different and trifling things are put toghether with no other reason than to be published by Grillo.

Grillo completely agrees with the letter (another typical italian thing: he would not have it published at all if he did not agree with it in the first place) and adds:

Luigi Tenco commited suicide 39 years go in San Remo. In one of his songs/poems sung:
"This /it's not the Life for sure / you dreamt one day for us / You'll see, you'll see / You'll see it change / maybe not tomorrow / but one beautiful day, it will change / maybe not tomorrow / but one day it will change"
Tenco dreamt already then - Grillo goes on - a different Italy. Like us. You'll see we are going to make it. (Translation by Italy is Falling)

Oh, what is worse than politics smeared all over poetry like a scattered paint of crap?
This is enough, you megalomaniac Grillo ass. Yes I am addressing you, like you do with the big guns.

First thing: Vedrai, vedrai ("You'll see") is not a political song at all.

Grillo, please, pay attention. Not everything is politics. Not all the stuff that drives you emotional agrees with your idea of the world.

Vedrai, vedrai is a great, moving, bitter love song in french style, as most of the songs by Tenco are. Bitter love songs. The bitternes is often confused with a political stance against the establishment, but as a matter of fact Tenco never did such statements.
The fact that you are referring to his verses as political, means you don't care no shit about Tenco himself. You only want to pile up arguments in support of your heroical position in a supposed fight against the establishment.
Shame on you, mr. Grillo.

(I removed from the post second, third and fourth "thing" because I felt they were not that much interesting. They were mostly about why Tenco died in San Remo, why reopen the case today, and how Paoli is a big mafioso all but uninterested in the story and should just shut up. I may post this things in the comments later for all my morbidest readers)

It's already old news that the famous comedian and even more famous italian blogger Beppe Grillo (BeppeGrillo.it) collected money from his thousands of visitors and bought a page on the international edition of the Herald Tribune, to expose 23 italian parliametarians who are already convicted for a crime while still sitting in public offices, helped by the rule that protects italian parlamentarian from arrest unauthorized by the Houses.

His intent is to denounce this situation and "clean up" the parliament from these supposed felons, but also to attract the world attention on one more italian anomaly.

Still, his initiative is not very convincing to me.
From the newspaper "Il Riformista" (via Dagospia), the piece I was about to write about it (I knew it, NEVER postpone a good post!).

The page that Beppe Grillo acquired on the International Herald Tribune, for the price of «€ 48,275 + 19,60% taxes» -- as reported on his blog, where soon he will also publish the initials of supporters with their respective donations -- represents a democratic, self-made, participated and vital example of a modern reappraisal of the institute of the pillory.

"Clean up parliament" it's the title that appears next to the furious Grillo's big face, in assonance with "Clean hands"¹. And he asks for help to the world to understand how "23 italian parliamentarians, already convicted of crimes by Italian Judicial System, and whose crimes are recorded in my Blog www.beppegrillo.it, sit in the Italian and European Parliaments" (and asking for putting them in state of suspension).

Leaving out the self-promoting message at the expenses of generous subscribers of the appeal, what is striking is this throwback flavour.

Leaving out also, that among the "23 convicted", to make number, there are also such cases as the one of Lino Jannuzzi, convicted for libeling, or Roberto Maroni, convicted for resisting to government officials (at the times when police irrupted into Northern League head offices in Milan) and that, had this principle always been valid, the entire story of the Italian Communist Party should be entirely rewritten².

"No international newspaper wanted to publish the list of the names" complains Grillo, like there were who knows what collusions.

But it is about facts of which newspapers and TVs spoke about for years, with trials shown on TV in prime time. It is about people who negotiated or paid their debt, and that have been reelected. The left, who preaches the re-education and rehabilitation of the worst murderers, what has to do with such a request for perpetual pillory and interdiction by public officies? Nothing, we hope". (translation by Italy is Falling).

Why were we about to write something very similar? Don't we agree to the fact that those disgusting corrupted and mafiosi parliamentarians should be out of any public office?
Yes we agree: we are sickened by them enough. It's been years already of loathing, I admit it.

But we also think that there is not only the official Mafia to fight in Italy, but also the Mafia spirit we have inside ourselves, the one we absorbed during years of italian life.
One of the rules of this unofficial Mafia spirit is that your enemy should not be treated with equal rights as your friend, but marginalized or excluded. Publicly exposed and put to shame.

In my mind, the communist public trials that still are held in China, whose main point is to put to shame the culprit, are the perfect equivalent of the forced marginalization from community life that the Mafiosa mentality repeats forever.
Democratic and liberal societies should have other means of ruling out the dark sides, so that possibly nobody in the end has to be ashamed, not the criminal (who pays his debt), nor the prosecutor (who accused only because the law asked him to).
Why not giving some trust to our laws or institutions?

I admit that in the italian society this system is broken, because certain powerful felons do not pay their debts.
But I do not want to be ashamed, tomorrow, of having founded (again, and again) a new order in Italy based on lists of public enemies.
Only a political informative battle is not shameful, and this should be incouraged, with all the means a democratic society allows.

Grillo's solution instead, is not political nor informative (the conviction of those parliamentarians is very old and well-known): it is ideologic. It does not bring relief (because names are out), but bitterness, negative feelings, and, as this is the case, hastened superficiality in pillorying.

It is a solution conceived from a televisive ideology that says: we don't trust no institution nor law, we want to be in peace with ourselves, we don't want to be involved.

As De André sung, "you are all involved just the same".

<sub>1. Clean Hands, "Mani Pulite": wave of inquiries and arrests that 12 years ago brought to an end an entire generation of italian corrupted (or not) politicians. "Clean Hands", at the time praised and supported by the left-wing parties that always bellowed against corruption, became the starting point of the Berlusconi and Northern League era.
2. Because many members of the ICP were convicted for resisting to public officials or for libeling in the last fifty years, even though not recently. The ICP doesn't exist anymore.</sub>