01-10-2017, 10:40 AM
I wanted to quote a few passages from the book that motivated me to start this thread: The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi (2007):
[The parenthetical expressions are my own interjections.] I have also added boldface for emphasis.
The affinities between the Italy of Berlusconi and contemporary America are hardly coincidental. Most of Berlusconi's success in his career, from real estate to television...has consisted of importing American models to Europe...he brought focus groups, the thirty-second political ad and a "contract with the Italians," based on Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." More important, like other businessmen-politicians [Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump] and celebrity candidates [Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura--and now Donald Trump], he tapped a deep distrust and dislike of politics, which characterizes modern democracy in an age of declining political participation. He helped create a continental model of the politics of anti-politics... (pp. 11-12)
[Does any of this sound familiar?]
Berlusconi's time on the international stage was generally perceived to be an embarrassment, raising the question: how could someone so shrewd and successful in some areas of his life be so apparently inept in another? Part of the answer is that Berlusconi, in the world arena, revealed his deeply provincial nature. Berlusconi after all had succeeded by getting the heads of pension funds drunk and telling dirty jokes. Remarks like "Let's talk about soccer and women" play much better at home than overseas. The favorite topics of conversation in any café in a small town or working-class neighborhood in Italy are soccer and women, and so average Italians hearing his remarks react with a sense of identification. Berlusconi appears like a regular guy the average Italian male would love to buy a drink for in exchange for hearing about the sexual exploits of his favorite soccer star. (pp. 291-292)
Berlusconi's media obsession may end up being both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His deep conviction that everything is a matter of perception made it difficult for him not just to appear to have done well, but to have actually governed well. The viewers of Berlusconi who had had enough of Berlusconi now placed him at the top of the category of politicians who talk a lot but do nothing...Media can help you get elected and even reelected, but image alone, if it bears no correspondence to reality, is not enough... (pp. 315-316)
...Berlusconi's controlling nature, his belief that he alone knows more about everything...and his natural instinct to reward friends and punish enemies, have meant that he would be very unlikely to push for real deregulation of the Italian economy.
Even the solidly right-wing American think tank the Heritage Foundation took a dim view of the Berlusconi government's performance: "Promised reforms have been postponed or forgotten. Serious structural problems...remain unaddressed...The economy has underperformed... (p. 318)
[This essentially characterizes Obama's legacy, too, in my opinion. If the same can said of Trump's time in the Oval Office, the nasty mood of the country may take a decided turn for the worse.]
So what, ultimately, is the meaning and lasting legacy of the Berlusconi phenomenon? Is Berlusconi a temporary anomaly--a reaction to the collapse of Italy's old parties in the early 1990s--or is he the harbinger of a new kind of media-based celebrity politics? Are Berlusconi's various conflicts of interest and his takeover of the media fundamentally innocuous since they do not appear to have brought him lasting success? Is the Berlusconi experience a lesson in the power of media politics or its limits? What is likely to be his lasting legacy, if any? (p. 319)
The formula Berlusconi developed--money + media + celebrity = political power--is the winning formula in many advanced democracies, not least in the United States. With the dominance of television in politics, money ahs arguably never mattered more in our political life. The billionaire in politics [Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump] has become an unsurprising figure in American political life... (p. 328)
[I think, too, the emergence of the billionaire as politician is prima facie evidence of an incipient oligarchy in America.]
There are powerful correlations between high levels of television watching and low levels of voter turnout and other forms of civic and political participation. Our balkanized information environment reflects (or perhaps helps create) a society increasingly marked by economic class, with an active, very well informed, literate elite that knows how to get what it wants from government and gets it, and a much more passive, ill-informed majority that watches television, is suspicious of government and media, and feels that it is losing ground economically but isn't sure what to do about it. (pp. 340-341)
The concentration of media, the decline of reading and civic participation, decreasing identification with political parties, the role of celebrity in politics, the appeal of anti-politics, declining unionization, and the rising gap between rich and poor are growing realities in many advanced capitalist democracies. They create new and troubling possibilities for governments that are run by and for the very few with an enormous media machine at their disposal, who need to win only a tentative nod of approval from an increasingly indifferent and ill-informed public every four years in order to continue with their business.
Thus, Silvio Berlusconi as a political figure may come and go, but the Berlusconi phenomenon is, in all likelihood, here to stay. He may appear at times a caricature, but in fact is a reflection of ourselves in a fun-house mirror, our features distorted and exaggerated but distinctly recognizable. (p. 342)
[The parenthetical expressions are my own interjections.] I have also added boldface for emphasis.
The affinities between the Italy of Berlusconi and contemporary America are hardly coincidental. Most of Berlusconi's success in his career, from real estate to television...has consisted of importing American models to Europe...he brought focus groups, the thirty-second political ad and a "contract with the Italians," based on Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." More important, like other businessmen-politicians [Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump] and celebrity candidates [Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura--and now Donald Trump], he tapped a deep distrust and dislike of politics, which characterizes modern democracy in an age of declining political participation. He helped create a continental model of the politics of anti-politics... (pp. 11-12)
[Does any of this sound familiar?]
Berlusconi's time on the international stage was generally perceived to be an embarrassment, raising the question: how could someone so shrewd and successful in some areas of his life be so apparently inept in another? Part of the answer is that Berlusconi, in the world arena, revealed his deeply provincial nature. Berlusconi after all had succeeded by getting the heads of pension funds drunk and telling dirty jokes. Remarks like "Let's talk about soccer and women" play much better at home than overseas. The favorite topics of conversation in any café in a small town or working-class neighborhood in Italy are soccer and women, and so average Italians hearing his remarks react with a sense of identification. Berlusconi appears like a regular guy the average Italian male would love to buy a drink for in exchange for hearing about the sexual exploits of his favorite soccer star. (pp. 291-292)
Berlusconi's media obsession may end up being both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His deep conviction that everything is a matter of perception made it difficult for him not just to appear to have done well, but to have actually governed well. The viewers of Berlusconi who had had enough of Berlusconi now placed him at the top of the category of politicians who talk a lot but do nothing...Media can help you get elected and even reelected, but image alone, if it bears no correspondence to reality, is not enough... (pp. 315-316)
...Berlusconi's controlling nature, his belief that he alone knows more about everything...and his natural instinct to reward friends and punish enemies, have meant that he would be very unlikely to push for real deregulation of the Italian economy.
Even the solidly right-wing American think tank the Heritage Foundation took a dim view of the Berlusconi government's performance: "Promised reforms have been postponed or forgotten. Serious structural problems...remain unaddressed...The economy has underperformed... (p. 318)
[This essentially characterizes Obama's legacy, too, in my opinion. If the same can said of Trump's time in the Oval Office, the nasty mood of the country may take a decided turn for the worse.]
So what, ultimately, is the meaning and lasting legacy of the Berlusconi phenomenon? Is Berlusconi a temporary anomaly--a reaction to the collapse of Italy's old parties in the early 1990s--or is he the harbinger of a new kind of media-based celebrity politics? Are Berlusconi's various conflicts of interest and his takeover of the media fundamentally innocuous since they do not appear to have brought him lasting success? Is the Berlusconi experience a lesson in the power of media politics or its limits? What is likely to be his lasting legacy, if any? (p. 319)
The formula Berlusconi developed--money + media + celebrity = political power--is the winning formula in many advanced democracies, not least in the United States. With the dominance of television in politics, money ahs arguably never mattered more in our political life. The billionaire in politics [Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump] has become an unsurprising figure in American political life... (p. 328)
[I think, too, the emergence of the billionaire as politician is prima facie evidence of an incipient oligarchy in America.]
There are powerful correlations between high levels of television watching and low levels of voter turnout and other forms of civic and political participation. Our balkanized information environment reflects (or perhaps helps create) a society increasingly marked by economic class, with an active, very well informed, literate elite that knows how to get what it wants from government and gets it, and a much more passive, ill-informed majority that watches television, is suspicious of government and media, and feels that it is losing ground economically but isn't sure what to do about it. (pp. 340-341)
The concentration of media, the decline of reading and civic participation, decreasing identification with political parties, the role of celebrity in politics, the appeal of anti-politics, declining unionization, and the rising gap between rich and poor are growing realities in many advanced capitalist democracies. They create new and troubling possibilities for governments that are run by and for the very few with an enormous media machine at their disposal, who need to win only a tentative nod of approval from an increasingly indifferent and ill-informed public every four years in order to continue with their business.
Thus, Silvio Berlusconi as a political figure may come and go, but the Berlusconi phenomenon is, in all likelihood, here to stay. He may appear at times a caricature, but in fact is a reflection of ourselves in a fun-house mirror, our features distorted and exaggerated but distinctly recognizable. (p. 342)