L'état c'est moi

''We have a firmly anti-Italian opposition that roots for the crisis and that does not want Italy to come out of the crisis'', stated Premier Silvio Berlusconi during a news conference that took place a few days ago. ''We will come out of the crisis'', he added, ''before and better than the rest."

Whenever I hear the word "anti-Italian"-and believe me, I've been hearing it a lot recently- I immediately think of someone who wants to secede from the center and south of Italy by creating a state named Padania. Right after that I think of someone who once said that the only use for the Italian flag would be for wiping a specific part of their body. I'll give you a hint: it is located in the nether region.

But wait. This individual already exists. He's Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Lega party and one of the strongest Berluscon's allies. Nevertheless, according to our Premier nobody is more anti-Italian and unpatriotic than the opposition. Why is that?

My wild guess is that NOBODY can contradict Silvio Berlusconi. If he says that Italy is coming out of the crisis, nobody can correct him by stating that as a matter of fact the unemployment rate is still very high. If they do, then they're immediately anti-Italian, because if you contradict the Premier, you automatically go against Italy.

This reminds me of another "Premier", actually he was a king, a king who went by the name of Louis XIV. There is a story that the youthful "roi soleil" strode into the parliament of Paris in his riding costume, interrupted the debate and proclaimed: "L'état c'est moi" ("I am the State" ). Most scholars say that there is no evidence that he ever did this, but he certainly believed the words attributed to him. Mr. Berlusconi believes those words too, but only if applied to himself. As far as I know, he never barged into the Italian parliament by proclaiming "Lo Stato sono io" (Italian for "I am the State") and I've never seen him going around in a riding costume , but he certainly shares a thing or two with the "Sun King".

Why was Louis XIV "nicknamed" "the Sun King"? First of all, his emblem was a sun, he promoted growth in France, and had a regular schedule that could be compared with the rising and setting of the sun. Apparently he once played the sun in a play. Most important of all, he was almost considered a deity by his subjects.

Now, Mr. Belusconi has never played the sun in a play -if he had, believe me, we would know- but as far as the deity part is concerned, let me remind you that after his first victory in 1994, he proclaimed himself "anointed by the people", implying that he had the same powers as a divine-right monarch anointed by God. Not to mention when, a few weeks ago, during another news conference, he compared himself to Superman. To top it all off, he also proclaimed himself the best Italian premier of the last 150 years. Italy was born as a state in 1861. Now you do the math.

Then comes the notorious " Villa Certosa", the Sardinian villa where he had numerous parties with numerous young ladies. Maybe his aim was to recreate the atmosphere of Versailles. In fact in the French royal palace many infidelities were going on. Louis XIV took as mistresses Louise de la Vallière, duchesse de Vaujours;Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquise de Montespan; and Marie-Angélique de Scoraille, duchesse de Fontanges.

Now, Mr. Berlusconi is a man of the people and he only consorts with "women of the people", like Noemi Letizia and Patrizia D'Addario. Neither of them is an aristocrat, but then neither is Silvio Berlusconi.

Saint Simon, who claimed Louis XIV slighted him, criticised him thus:

"There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it".

I wonder what Louis XIV would have said in a news conference.