… sex and betrayal of a tawdry novel.” In fact two announced in just one week.
The first headline-grabbing story.
"To my husband and to the public man, I therefore ask for a public apology, not having received one privately," Veronica Lario wrote to her husband, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s flamboyant, shady billionaire and, oh yes, the former prime minister of Italy, in a letter that was published on the front page of the newspaper that has been most critical of him in Italy.
In a move applauded by many women in Italy, she finally decided to go public with her anger at her husband’s off and on affairs and come-on comments to beautiful young women while out and about.
The back-story undercuts her outrage in at least two ways. “Her own relationship with him began as an affair with when he was married, with children. And, she’d previously written that she, "rarely saw Mr. Berlusconi but that she considered their marriage stable and herself ‘the perfect kind of wife for the kind of man Silvio is. He can concentrate on himself and his work knowing his wife won’t create a fuss if he’s away from his family.’”
Yet anyone can reach a tipping point of what she chooses to take. It's just that you can do it in a more flamboyant way when you're in the public eye.
Then there’s second lurid politics+ sex story gone global.
(Ah, the power of the Internet to bring us all the details of the important global news of the moment). Barely two days after that media frenzy ensued in Italy, yesterday, a former aide to our San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newson set off her own firestorm here, to the delight of our local media. Even The New York Times delighted in calling it, “a fast-unfolding scandal with all the sex and betrayal of a tawdry novel.”
President Bush must be sighing in some relief that the media can be somewhat diverted by affairs rather than what even presidential candidate McCain has called, “the dire and deteriorating situation in Iraq.”
It seems that while Newsom was going through his very public divorce from his wife, a local prosecutor-turned Fox TV commentator, the mayor took up with the wife of his close friend and campaign chair. As part of her rehab she decided to come clean and tell her husband of the affair. That was while Newsom was in Davos. But you can read the rest of the story here, then go back to the Italian storyline.
Made to Stick authors, Dan and Chip Heath have a timely example of the way to tell the story that gets re-told in the public letter that Lario wrote back to his wife.
In response to his wife’s public outrage, Berlusconi wrote, “Your dignity should not be an issue: I will guard it like a precious material in my heart even when thoughtless jokes come out of my mouth,” he wrote. “But marriage proposals, no, believe me, I have never made one to anyone.
“Forgive me, however, I beg of you, and take this public testimony of private pride that submits to your anger as an act of love. One among many. A huge kiss. Silvio.”
What an Italian way to influence.
As Ezio Mauro, of the Italian paper, La Repubblica, wrote of Berlusconi, “The man is a walking oxymoron, but it has not stopped him from working his way up,” he wrote. “Why?
Simple: because he embodies the Italian dream of being everything, of pleasing everyone (and indulging himself in everything), without giving up anything."
If the U.S. political speechwriters are even half as compelling in their work for their candidates in the excruciatingly long presidential campaign period ahead, then we may find that the important work of politics can also be entertaining.
Perhaps you’d like some fresh insights on LikeAbility, perceiving deceit, making Smart Choices or to Make Yourself Memorable.
