"Boiled children": Berlusconi goes bananas

Never the most stable of people at the best of times, Silvio Berlusconi ("Il Cavaliere", as he's dubbed by the Italian Press) yesterday lost it completely in the heat of the Italian election campaign. Like much of the Italian Right, he's obsessed with "communisti" (that is, anyone to the left of Forza Italia), and this spilled over into absurdity when, on Sunday, he stated baldly that Chinese Communists "boiled babies" to make fertiliser, leading to an outraged reaction from the Chinese, sad head-shaking amongst his Right-wing allies, and glee on the Left. According to Yahoo!/Reuters news:

Domenica scorsa Berlusconi, accusato di nutrire una vera e propria ossessione per la "minaccia comunista" in Italia, aveva detto che i comunisti hanno storicamente bollito i bambini, per farne fertilizzante.

This walking political car crash then tried to spin his ravings after the storm over his remarks erupted, saying insouciantly that he was being ironic but had cited a "true fact, certified by documents":

"In mezzo a una conversazione di due ore, in cui si alternano cose serie ad altre ironiche, ho fatto una battuta, una ironia discutibile, non ho saputo trattenermi, ma ho citato un fatto vero, certificato da documenti." (La Repubblica online, 29/3/06)

His monstrous ego can't possibly let him admit that he'd made a gaffe far worse than his "concentration camp guard" jibe of last year, so he carries on digging a rapidly deepening hole. Whilst his direct and indirect control of all major TV networks gives him a major advantage in the electoral campaign, he's surely the Left's greatest electoral asset. In a way it'll be sad when he loses next week's elections because you're never short of a laugh when Il Cavaliere is riding his hobby horses, but even the famously ribald Italian sense of humour is, I suspect, reaching its limits with this dangerous buffoon. Ciao ciao, Silvio, e grazie per nulla.

Yahoo! News Italia: "La Cina irritata da discorso Berlusconi su bimbi bolliti" (28/3/06)