Berlusconi, De Benedetti and bon ton
I'll tell you my personal impressions of Berlusconi and De Benedetti. Italics by Teo Dalavecuras
It is not bon ton, Lina Sotis would say, to sneak into a courtyard brawl, albeit in the media, between two protagonists like Silvio Berlusconi and Carlo De Benedetti to snatch a few seconds of the quarter of an hour of fame that would be up to anyone, as one said who understood. But the temptation exists. In this case, the temptation arises from Mariastella Gelmini's comment on De Benedetti's invective who on 4 September 2020 (in these things the dates are important) said : "Berlusconi was a great cheater". Here is what Mrs. Gelmini replied : “It would do well to refrain from such comments, since even Di Maio has learned to respect political opponents. But Di Maio, compared to De Benedetti, is a member of the House of Lords ”.
The argument – I apologize to any readers – is not one that can be dismissed with a joke, it is delicate.
To begin with, the "critique of sources". The statements are reported by Corriere della Sera , which on Berlusconi is the highest known authority, from the first page on the crime notice notified in Naples when he was Prime Minister, to the confidential conversation in Arcore with Ferruccio de Bortoli when the clouds thickened on the love story between Silvio and Veronica announced an imminent and devastating storm.
On the content of Mr Gelmini's reply, I would say this. First of all, that "even" seems a bit out of place: if you have to judge from what he has done and / or stopped doing in these two years, "Giggino" (I will forgive my confidence) has been seriously underestimated by the media, and it is coming out better than the engineer Casalino, and here the "even" might be there. Secondly, I have never dated members of the House of Lords and therefore I prefer not to comment on this point prudently.
Having made these three essential clarifications, I come to the point. Although I never had the habit or confidence with the Knight or with the Engineer (as he used to call them in the distant times when the protagonists of the economic scene were stars), in the Eighties, in my short and semi-clandestine "life" as a journalist, I it had happened once to meet both of them within a short time of each other. We speak of fleeting impressions that are not worth these bytes, unless we are followers of Karl Kraus (“Nothing is deeper than what appears on the surface”).
Both the one and the other left me the impression – as is statistically inevitable with characters of that size – of two great manipulators to be handled with the utmost caution. But what matters are always the differences. Berlusconi used provocation to bring out the interlocutor and then "treat" him as he should be treated; above all it gave the idea of having fun: an overall impression of lightness. I cannot say the same about De Benedetti, who seemed to me to be quite committed to impressing the interlocutor with the image of a serious, thoughtful and absolutely decent man, with a few winks thrown in and no curiosity.
Now, I don't want to comment on the peasant's license that Mrs. Gelmini has kindly handed over to the Engineer, because I believe in the presumption of innocence even with respect to this type of "accusation". My impression remains that of two characters of which one, Berlusconi, is always intrigued by a new interlocutor while the other, De Benedetti, cannot hide even from the most distracted (like myself) his irrepressible need to manipulating others and their total disinterest in those in front of them.
Then let's face it: to unleash a controversy over Berlusconi, that is, on the most obvious target imaginable, only because in ten days your new newspaper comes out, in which you have invested the misery of 10 million euros, and your name is Carlo De Benedetti, is something that can be defined in many ways but that, for sure, Lina Sotis would not call chic .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/berlusconi-de-benedetti-e-il-bon-ton/ on Sat, 05 Sep 2020 18:27:02 +0000.