Bizarre:
Berlusconi has had an Italian masterpiece altered - because of an exposed breast.
The 71-year-old worried that cameras would focus on the naked woman's chest in the painting hanging behind him during his press briefings.

Time Unveiling Truth by Giambattisto Tiepolo now has a white veil painted over the offending bosom.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-10411...g-showed-breast.html

This guy gets crazier and crazier each day! Next thing you know he'll have his wife wear a burqa (sp?) when she appears with him in public.

What is more interesting to me is that the newspaper this article is taken from neither condemns or condones the action. This is because the Daily Mail, under normal circumstances, would condone what has been done. Think conservative with a very big C!

I remember Attorney General Ashcroft doing something similar in the US. The statue of Justice (with her scale, blindfold and sword) was barebreasted, so when Ashcroft was doing his press conferences they would drape her in cloth. But this is Italy- I thought Puritanism had been rejected here centuries ago.

I fear that Italy is headed for hard times and I am not sure that the Italians have what it takes to rebel. The threshold in Italy for putting up with nonsense is very high. As I’ve pointed out before, Italians don’t understand that draconian measurements against the Roma community, denying gays their rights, etc., simply means that this oppressive regime is just step closer to infringing on their basic rights. It really is time for people to wake up.

I'd have said it's time for Berlusconi to move his desk over a few meters.

All well and good not to want a bare boob just behind the left ear while trying to look serious on TV about raising taxes, but to defile the work of an artist Italy should be proud of is OTT.

Victorians went around the vatican museum covering naked statues with fig leaves, but that was then, and photo-ops weren't part of the picture.

Fat ego gone berluserque.

Well, the painting is called "Time unveiling the Truth"; considering all of his past and present mischiefs he must have freaked out at the thought and decided it was best to "cover things up"

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Grtngs,

quote:

and I am not sure that the Italians have what it takes to rebel.

Rebel to what, exactly?

I don’t know why, but there seems to be this widespread idea that Berlusconi landed on Italy from nowhere, like an estranged body to a society that’s got nothing to do with it.
As I point out every time I talk politics with anyone, Berlusconi was not nominated by the CIA, or the KGB or Mars. He was a free, aware choice of a free democratic people in a free democratic nation, the perfect outcome of a society with low and cynical moral standards.
So how is someone supposed to “rebel” to his own way of going around things?

Of course there’s at least a 50% of decent Italians (the implication here is clear) who despise the man and all he stands for. Which implies that the thing that’s near to rebellion is, actually, civil war.
Not that I want it, of course. Just to point out that you're supposed to “rebel” when a government imposes rules that are seen as alien to a people's values. But how do you rebel to YOUR OWN choice that reflects your (rotten) values?

And I’m sorry to have to say that Americans are, nowadays, the people that’s nearer to Italians, in terms of a majority of airheads that make political choices that give a bad name to the whole nation.

You rebel against your own choices when they no longer work for you. We do it all the time through divorce, lifestyle changes, etc.

Ok.
But if you're clueless enough as to vote for him in the first place, I don't know how "clueful" you can get as to understand that he no longer works for you.
Not to mention those who are getting precisely what they voted for: tax elusion, rampant narrowmindedness, etc.etc.

I know, I know: "it's a sad and beautiful world". (Bob Benigni, Down by Law)

In fact, that's why I only see more of this coming.