Vice and Spice

Sneaking a smoke now and again is not the worst presidential flaw imaginable. Our president is positively monkish compared with Silvio Berlusconi, whose Vesuvial vices spurred a trio of women academics in Italy to write an “Appeal to the First Ladies.” It urges Michelle Obama and other wives of world leaders to boycott next month’s G-8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, to protest the Italian prime minister’s “sexist” and “offensive” manner toward women. One of the things the petitioners objected to, according to The Times of London, was Berlusconi’s attempt to put up actresses and showgirls as candidates in the European elections (not to mention as allegedly remunerated ornaments for wild parties at his posh villas). His wife, Veronica Lario, a former actress who met him while she was starring topless in “The Magnificent Cuckold” and who is now divorcing him, has operatically upbraided him twice: once two years ago after he had a public flirtation with a TV starlet whom he later appointed as Minister of Equal Opportunities; and again last month when Lario charged her randy hubby with “consorting with minors” after he went to the 18th birthday party of a model and gave her a diamond and gold necklace. Naturally, Berlusconi, who likes to be called “Papi” by his flock of chicks, upped the antics. The paparazzi splashed photos of topless babes — or “L’harem di Berlusconi,” as they’re known — and a buck naked ex-Czech prime minister romping at Berlusconi’s villa in Sardinia.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/opinion/24dowd.html?scp=4&sq=BERLUSCONI&st=cse