Italy: Circus Maximus

In ancient Rome, critics of the emperor charged that the city’s grand spectacles such as chariot races or gladiator battles were often employed to distract from the periodic crises gripping the empire.

War might have been raging nearby or their rights as citizens in peril, but tens of thousands of Romans still crowded into massive stadia like Circus Maximus or the Coliseum, cheering and drinking wine long enough to forget the issues outside the stadium walls.

“Everyone now restrains themselves and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses,” the 1st and 2nd century Roman poet and commentator Juvenal wrote in reference to what he saw as declining of Roman values in his day.

Fast-forward almost 2,000 years and Italian media tycoon-turned-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has proved an adept latter-day practitioner of a more modern brand of political distraction.

Commentators and observers have long been reduced to knowing shrugs when a well-timed Berlusconi gaffe or hastily planned foreign trip stole the headlines from the latest report of poor economic growth or eroding Italian competitiveness.

In provocative interviews on the television networks he controls, the charming Berlusconi would answer questions about investigations into corruption with disparaging comments about integrity of the judges involved; queries about government policies would yield amusing anecdotes about the prime minister’s success as a businessman.

But as the situation in Italy has worsened, so has the frequency of the distractions, begging the question: When the distraction game works so effectively and so often, who is to blame? Is it the one causing the distraction, or the ones so easily distracted?

One strong example dates to April, after a devastating earthquake destroyed large parts of the medieval regional capital of L’Aquila, leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Rather than unveiling an aggressive program to repair the wrecked city and address the long-term inadequacies that make dealing with disasters like this difficult, Berlusconi’s response was pure theater: He announced dramatic plans to move July’s G-8 summit to L’Aquila. The move would temporarily divert millions in government spending to the area, but was apparently done with little thought of how the city’s nearly non-existent infrastructure would handle the influx of thousands of people for the three-day summit, or how it could provide adequate security for the arrival of eight of the world’s most important heads of state. Yet most Italians applaud the move (though, tellingly, to a much lesser degree among those living near L’Aquila).
 
More disturbing still is the recent saga that alleges a romantic link between the 72-year-old Berlusconi and Noemi Letizia, an aspiring 18-year-old model from Naples. The story has been headline fodder in Italy for most of the last two weeks, as newspapers reveal sordid details: The leggy blond calls Berlusconi “Daddy,” for example, and Letizia and 40 of her young female friends spent New Year’s Eve at the prime minister’s villa in Sardinia.  Berlusconi, meanwhile, is forced to take time away from matters of state to answer criticism from his estranged wife and to seek to legally block the release of photos from the party.

The bad news in Italy has not slowed, it only seems that way to Italians. Unemployment levels are approaching a 12-year high; economic growth has slowed to near zero and will trail the EU average this year for the 13th time in 14 years; organized crime is resurgent; and corruption on the rise. But this type of news is sorely under-reported and rarely discussed: Italy’s modern-day Circus Maximus is too strong to ignore.