the Italian lesson

Italian woman proudly declares:

"I 'M A TESTICLE"

Hey! I just learned a new Italian word!

Coglione!

It means testicles!

My Professore was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in the final days of a re-election campaign. (The election will be 9-10 April; Berlusconi is trailing his center-left opponent by about 5 points.)

During a speech, he called left-wing political opponents "coglione."

When applied to complete human beings, it means, roughly: "bloody stupid people." Other translations in English news stories have been "idiots" and "assholes."

Grazie, Sgr. Berlusconi!

The "un" in the photo means it's a masculine noun, which is a relief to me.
Meanwhile, Berluscone's opponents have begun carrying signs proclaiming: "We're Testicles!"

Here's what he said, and (with a little help from My Silicon Friend) a rough translation:

====================
"Ho troppa stima nell'intelligenza degli italiani per pensare che ci siano così tanti coglioni che possano votare contro il proprio interesse"

"I have too much esteem for the intelligence of the Italians to think that there could be that many balls-idiots who would vote against the real national interest"
====================

The Australian
(national daily, owned by Murdoch's News Corporation)
Monday 27 March 2006

Berlusconi's on a role
in satire movie

As Italy's general election draws closer, everyone wants to take a shot at the PM, writes Natasha Bita in Florence

ITALIANS flocked to the cinema at the weekend for the opening of a satirical film that sends up Silvio Berlusconi.

"The Caiman," by celebrated left-wing director Nanni Moretti, contains gaffes from the Prime Minister's most controversial speeches. Its opening scene has a fictional PM watching a suitcase stuffed with banknotes drop from the ceiling.

In real life, the storyline is just as dramatic. As the leader of Italy's Centre-Right House of Liberties coalition lags in the opinion polls, Italy's richest man is lashing out at his critics.

A fortnight out from national elections, Berlusconi has managed to pick a fight with the nation's leading industrialists, swear at a teenage protester and make a joke about Italy declaring war on France.

A magazine has published embarrassing photos of him flexing his muscles at the beach, taking communion despite being divorced, and holding hands with his young blonde secretary.

Berlusconi's supporters demanded a boycott of Tod's shoes this week, in a vendetta against the firm's owner for daring to criticise their leader.

So vicious is the electioneering in this campaign that President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was forced to intervene on Saturday with a plea to "moderate the tone".

When a teenage boy called "Hooray for Vittorio Mangano" at a rally in Genoa on Tuesday, Berlusconi lost his cool. Mangano, hired as a stable-hand at Berlusconi's villa in 1975, was a mafia mobster who died in prison in 2000, after being sentenced for life over a double murder.

Livid, Berlusconi got out of his car and strode towards the startled student. "I am a respectable person," he roared, stabbing his finger at the protester. "You are a coglione!" The Italian word for testicle is crude slang meaning "idiot", or "arsehole".

A few days earlier, Berlusconi took aim at Italy's industrialists. Supposedly bed-ridden with a bad back, he made a surprise appearance at a summit of the peak industry lobby group Confindustria, and harangued business leaders for having criticised Italy's economic performance -- despite the fact conomic growth was zero last year.

He then insulted Deigo Della Valle, the owner of luxury Italian fashion labels Tod's, Hogan and Fay, saying he had "gone out of his mind and supports the Left."

Della Valle retorted that the Prime Minister was a "tired man on the verge of a nervous breakdown", and suggested that his family take care of him for a few months.

The spat led to a debate over the merits of Tod's shoes versus the cheaper Clarks label, with Berlusconi supporters demanding a boycott of his critic.

The news director of one of Berlusconi's three television stations swapped his Tod's for Clarks -- although he blamed the switch on a toe infection.

Another blue broke out when the US State Department issued a travel bulletin warning its citizens to stay away from potentially dangerous street protests in the run-up to the April 9-10 poll.

Berlusconi said the Americans were right to be concerned, and blamed his left-wing opponents for violent demonstrations in Milan and Genoa this month.

"There is such resentment and hate against America that a US citizen who ends up in the middle of one of these protests, I don't believe they can feel tranquil," he said.

Romano Prodi, leader of the centre-left Union opposition, phoned the US ambassador in Rome to complain about the travel warning, insisting there was no need to sow "anguish and fear".

But more inflammatory comments came from the government benches, particularly far-right Northern League MP Roberto Calderoli, the minister sacked last month for starting riots in Libya by flaunting a T-shirt of Danish anti-Islamic cartoons on television.

Promoting a policy of "family, Christian roots and immigration", Mr Calderoli said male immigrants should bring their wives with them -- or else take tablets to neuter their sex drive.

"If so many sexual crimes are carried out by foreigners it is because they arrive at an age in which their hormones are running high, without women and with prostitutes who refuse them," he told the latest issue of Panorama magazine.

"They should bring their women with them, or else I would give them those famous pills that stop sexual desire."

Berlusconi seems frustrated, but not by his notorious pledge to abstain from sex until the poll. Rather, he is ticked off about curbs on his media clout. The communications authority fined two of his TV stations a total of €300,000 ($507,000) last week for giving the Government more air-time than the opposition.

A master of marketing, he has decided to pitch his propaganda directly to the voters by using his publishing house, Mondadori, to print a 160-page book detailing the achievements of his five years in office. Glossy photos show him hobnobbing with world leaders, including his personal mates George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, along with rock star Bono, world motorcycle champ Valentino Rossi and the late pope John Paul II.

A juicier version of his life comes courtesy of the Italian magazine Oggi, which has published a 17-page tribute to Berlusconi and his rival Prodi in its latest issue.

"What a macho, macho man!" is the caption beside a grainy photo of Berlusconi flexing his muscles at the beach in 1992. On the facing page is the pudgy Prodi, with an "abundant spare tyre", bathing in the waters of Gallipoli.

While Prodi refuses to dye his salt-and-pepper hair, the magazine says, Berlusconi detests grey and has had two hair transplants. Italy's leader also employs a celebrity make-up artist, who uses Chanel products and a golden bronzing powder. Berlusconi wears boxer shorts; his rival prefers underpants.

Prodi, a professor of economics, married one of his students, Flavia Franzoni, in 1969, in a ceremony conducted by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, one of the most powerful figures in the Catholic Church.

Declaring an income of €92,500 ($157,000) in his last tax return, Prodi lives on pensions paid from his former positions as a university professor, Italian prime minister, and president of the European Commission.

Berlusconi, worth U$11 billion ($15.4 billion) through his family-controlled Fininvest and Mediaset empire, collects watches (the priciest is a €90,000 gold Audemars Piguet number) and houses -- he boasts 14.

Berlusconi insists he will not watch Moretti's movie, which Italian commentators are comparing to Michael Moore's provocative film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The Italian film ends with the conviction of the Berlusconi character for corruption. Back in the real world, a judge will wait until after the election to decide whether to indict Berlusconi on corruption charges.

The Prime Minister is fighting allegations by Milanese prosecutors that he bribed his one-time British lawyer with U$600,000 to give false evidence in an earlier corruption trial. [VLEEPTRON EXTRA: The lawyer's wife, a minister in Tony Blair's cabinet, has separated from her husband, and now only attends cabinet meetings at which unclassified matters are discussed. She claims her husband never told her about his alleged financial dealings with Berlusconi.]

Berlusconi must be hoping it will not turn out to be a case of life imitating art.

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