Sex Scandals
Many years ago, il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading newspaper, ran a column in which the author ruminated about the grim news coming out of Great Britain: some leading politician was caught in a sexual liaison and his career was ruined. The Italian columnist remarked bitterly that this was only the latest in a long series of wonderful such scandals, going back to the John Profumo-Christine Keeler saga (1963). Imagine ! he said, the Brits were drowning in sex at the highest level of society, while in Italy — the home of the “Latin lover” — there hadn’t been a decent sex scandal for years, maybe decades.
I quoted that column in 1983, when the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi became prime minister of Italy. “Now there is hope,” I wrote. The years of boring, sexless Christian Democrats were finally over, and Italy had a PM worthy of the national stereotype. Very little was written about Craxi’s strong affections for the opposite sex, but it played a small role in a famous event in 1985 known as the Achille Lauro affair. An Italian cruise ship of that name was hijacked by a gang of Palestinian terrorists, and one of the passengers, an American Jew by the name of Leon Klinghoffer, was pushed overboard in his wheelchair. Subsequently, the terrorists forced the ship to Egypt, where they commandeered a plane and took off for Tunis, where the Palestinian Liberation Organization was headquartered. We sent some fighter planes to intercept the flight, and forced it north, towards a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. The plan was to have the terrorists either arrested and held in Italy, or turned over to US Special Forces and brought to Washington for trial. Either way, Craxi — who was very pro-Palestinian — would have to give his ok for the planes (the terrorists’ and ours) to land on Italian soil.
It was late at night when the American Embassy in Rome tried to reach Craxi by telephone, but they couldn’t get through. Hours went by, and the planes were running out of gas. Robert McFarlane, the national security adviser, ordered me to “do something” (Craxi was a close personal friend of mine), and I called the Raphael Hotel in Rome, where he occupied the penthouse. I managed to get his personal assistant on the phone, who told me Craxi wasn’t there and couldn’t be reached. “Listen,” I said (I’m paraphrasing here), “this is a serious matter, and if people die tonight because you’re telling me he isn’t there, when in reality he’s in bed with the usual [woman] in the next room, your picture will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world tomorrow….” And just like that, Craxi was on the line. Problem solved. (Well, kinda solved; the top terrorist was smuggled out of Italy, but the others served jail sentences.)
You needed to know about the passions of the PM.
I recalled this story while reading about the recent escapades of the current Italian leader, Silvio Berlusconi. You see, Berlusconi and Craxi were friends and allies, and we now know that they shared more than political passions. But there’s a very big difference between then and now. Back then — the eighties — there was next to nothing in the Italian press about Craxi’s sex life, while now Berlusconi’s activities are all over the front pages. Things are different now. It’s even conceivable, albeit rather unlikely, that his sex scandals will bring down the Italian prime minister.
This is quite a change. Back when Bill Clinton’s sex scandals were front-page material, and he was impeached for lying about them, the leading Italian commentators ridiculed American puritanism, and proclaimed themselves shocked at the very idea that a national leader’s political power could be threatened by perfectly normal dalliances. Of course there was a purely political component: most Italian journalists, as most of their American counterparts, were Clinton loyalists, while today’s versions are mostly Berlusconi critics.
I can’t help wondering how they would react if the American press ridiculed Italian puritanism, and evinced shock at the very idea that a duly elected prime minister could find himself at risk because he ran around with some pretty young girls. In fact, several of the most famous Italian commentators who today are leading the charge against Berlusconi were vigorous defenders of Bill Clinton back when.
All of which adds up to one more bad sign about our political culture. It used to be possible to talk about cultural differences that determined whether or not sexual activity was politically significant (Americans got all worked up over it, while Italians considered it quite normal and thus politically insignificant). Now it’s just about politics: a sex scandal is a really big deal if you don’t like the guy, but not so much if you like him.
To be sure, there are potentially important common threads between then and now. If there is some crisis and we need to get Berlusconi on the phone late at night, knowledge of his nocturnal habits may well be crucial in matters of life and death.
I wonder if they teach these things at the schools of advanced diplomatic studies. Wanna bet?
UPDATE: Welcome Instapunditeers! I hope you noticed that Glenn posted the link in the middle of the night..just saying…
I would say there is a difference between having a lover (or two) and routinely hosting sex parties with 20 or 30 girls, most of them prostitutes, including underage.
cheating on your wife is “just” morally wrong. having 20 prostitutes at the PM private house every week or so is dangerous. who knows who these girls are? they may very well be foreign agents, or controlled by organized crime, or. and they have direct access to the person of the PM, they can take photos inside his house. this is a serious security issue. can you see the difference?
and, politically, we can also add that Mr. B. pretends to be a defender of the Catholic values and of traditional family. yeah, right.
I would say there is a difference between having a lover (or two) and routinely hosting sex parties with 20 or 30 girls, most of them prostitutes, including underage.
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
Michael, the blog name of “Faster, Please” kinda precludes a post title of “Sex Scandals”. Just sayin’. OK now I’ll go read the post…
Touche’ Lewy 14. Good work!
Not touching that bet.
This sounds sort of familiar, hmm.
With maybe a Russian diplomat in the War Room? And a damaged American bomber with nukes unable to respond to a recall.
And Dmitri, a Man of the People, but also a Man …
Let’s put in Peter Sellers as US President!
Memories of Dr. Strangelove (or, how I learned to stop worrying and to love the bomb). How did that ending, bomb blowing song go.
We’ll
Meet again,
Don’t know where,
Don’t know when.
But I know,
We’ll meet again.
Some sunny day.
Great point about politics over judgement, keep up the great work!
“The Italian columnist remarked bitterly that this was only the latest in a long series of wonderful such scandals, going back to the John Profumo-Christine Keeler saga (1963).”
That Italian columnist didn’t object to the British politician having an affair, only that he got caught. You see, to the Italians affairs are the norm, NOT the exception, and they have had generations to perfect this craft. In America we’re considered “Puritans” as well as prudes when it comes to sex, which is why the Europeans could never understand why we actually impeached Bill Clinton over lieing under oath about having an affair. They thought we were crazy. We thought that lieing under oath was an impeachable offense, and it is. Just shows you how different we are, and what low standards they have. We may not be perfect, but at least we TRY to have some moral values. The Europeans don’t even try, so anything goes. No wonder the liberals in this country love the Europeans so much.
The problem with sex scandals is, of course, that people, especially men, will do all kinds of stupid things in order to obtain sex or hide certain private matters from the general public. This can include violating the public trust, disclosing key secrets and other forms of corruption.
When someone is a public official or in a confidential role in the government or military, that someone is a prime target for people who will do ANYTHING to corrupt that person and obtain the information or influence desired. It is not “just sex.” There is a valid reason why a sex scandal is and should be a scandal.
Sdraio: you attribute “a lover or two” to Bill Clinton? Gimme a break. He had several as Governor of Arkansas, Gennifer Flowers being the most outspoken of them, then there were Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones who settled out of court for $850.000 damages. The difference between Clinton and Berlusconi is that while Berlusconi pays these girls, Clinton seduced them and molested those who didn’t play the game. A couple of them he even raped (Juanita Broaddrick said as much in an interview still available on youtube). And the real BIG difference is that Berlusconi’s (second) wife was the first to reveal his escapades to the press, while Bill Clinton owes his eventual political survival to Hillary. Thank you Michael for pointing out how two-faced the press can be.
To be a man or not to be a man… that is the question. That’s what I first thought after reading your post, Michael.
Could not agree more on the conclusions reached, however.
The genuinely political aspect of Clinton’s misbehavior was that he misbehaved in the workplace, with an employee, and used his official position to reward and silence her.
This followed his long history as governor of Arkansas of using state police escorts as go-betweens to solicit women for sex.
If Berlusconi is having orgies with swarms of whores, that is disgusting and reprehensible, but if he does it on his own time, out of his own pocket (he’s a billionaire), there’s no criminality or political impropriety. (Prostitution is legal in Italy.)
Incidentally, what destroyed Profumo’s political career was not that he had sex with a prostitute – it was that he lied about it in Parliament. That was unforgivable.
well, there was also the annoying detail of the involvement of a Soviet officer…probably had something to do with the end of Profumo’s career don’t you think?
And here I thought that it was a couple of bimbos named Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler who brought down Profumo.
The blatant bias of the old liberal ‘mainstream’ media is not at all surprising, it’s evidently what they “teach” (propagandize) in journalism school and is also why the Internet and Fox News have largely replaced our old institutes of propaganda…I mean, “news.”
On another note, in regards to Glenn Reynolds linking to you in the wee hours of the morning, you do know that he (it) is obviously not human, and as to what Glenn really is, there is some argument whether it’s a “space alien” or some form of artificial intelligence, I’m going with the latter.
isn’t he a genius nanobot?
It’s only a “scandal” when a conservative politician is involved. Otherwise we’re told “it’s just sex” and derided as “prudes”.
In Italy, having sex with so many young girls, means that you’re still a “strong man” that can inspire confidence to the plebe, and not a senile old man (Berlusconi is between 72 and 75 years old), at least he occupies the medias, and the Italians forget their worries !
Given the problems that are in the inbox of the Italian Prime Minister, it doesn’t matter who is Prime Minister. The problems have to be dealt with.
So, instead of micromanaging, what is preventing Berlusconi’s enemies from taking a step back, and asking, “Are there options better than what Berlusconi is utilizing to deal with the problems?”
Thank you Dr. Ledeen for telling us how to get hold of a VIP in an emergency. Next time I go to Italy, I’m going to tell your story: we’ll see how many people know about it.
WRT the comparison of Berlusconi to Clinton: we should be told who those “famous Italian commentators” are “who today are leading the charge against Berlusconi” but “were vigorous defenders of Bill Clinton back when.” I don’t think the comparison is fair; first, because [as pointed out by Sdraio] Clinton was not involved with underage girls; second and more important, because I believe that Italian commentators give their own opinions on Italian matters, but are just parroting the American media when it comes to foreign matters, and especially American matters.
A more appropriate comparison would be Clinton to JFK, or Berlusconi to Craxi. Let me expound on the latter. You know very well that the Italian press was [to put it mildly] not friendly to Craxi, in spite of his having the “socialist” label attached to himself. Yet they did not, to my knowledge, say anything about his sex life. Why is that? my guess is that financial scandals were sufficient to destroy Craxi: there was no need for sex scandals. But financial scandals have not made much of an impact on Mr.B, so the Italian press is trying something else. But I’d like to hear your opinion on this.
I think private lives were generally off limits in the Italian press during the Craxi years. Why did it change? Part of a general drop in standards, I think.
How does the general silence of the press regarding Barney Frank’s sexcapades fit in with Clinton and Berlusconi and Craxi scandals? There was some press attention when one of the senator’s aides was apprehended for running a call-boy ring out of the Senator’s home (office?) but little more. The matter certainly wasn’t much raised during the last election. Then there was Barney Frank’s er, ah, intimacy with Franklin Raines who made ninety million dollars off Fannie Mae. How come Barney Frank’s sexual escapades don’t draw press heat? An ordinary citizen not privileged with a press card might imagine Senator Barney Frank is a dangerous degenerate.
A New Jersey governor of recent memory exploited his scandalous betrayal of his wife with another man to eclipse financial corruption charges against his criminal administration. So sympathetic was the press to the plight of the governor of a major state forced to come out of the closet and fess up about his affair with a men that they overlooked the fact that the governor was introduced to his handsome paramour and utterly compromised by wealthy and mobbed-up real estate developers.
Time was, homosexuality itself was scandalous. In our more enlightened age gay sex gets an automatic pass. Speaks volumes about morality and the press.
I’d like to hear more about this long-lost golden age when everyone judged political scandals based on strictly principled standards of conduct, untainted by their partisan allegiances. What century was that, and in what country?
Thankfully, the American public is uninterested in poking our noses into the internal affairs, political and/or carnal, of other nations. We figure that other countries have the right and the responsibility to govern themselves, and when they fail, as human beings inevitably do, it’s their job to clean up after themselves.
Unfortunately, the same is not true of the US government.
American politicians of every political stripe are all too happy to seize upon whatever excuses are available to intervene on whatever side seems to support the short-term self-interest of those politicians and their supporters and cronies.
“Humanitarian intervention” is a thin disguise. It’s all about the Benjamins, the euros, the rupees, the yuan, and especially the barrels of oil!
Contrary to popular belief, monogamy was not created by ecclesiastical fiat. It was, in fact, devised by a devilish left wing Roman politician of antiquity in cahoots with a journalist of Il Tempi Romani (Roman Times, their version of the gray lady) to avail himself of the juicy fruits of “gotcha” moments of his adversaries.
since I assume many here do not read Italian, maybe I should post how the whole scandal erupted.
A 17 years old illegal Moroccan immigrant, “Ruby”, was arrested for theft. After a few hours, PM Berlusconi personally – personally! – call the police station and order Ruby to be released since, he says, she’s Mubarak nephew (I swear). This has been confirmed several times by the police station’s head. Ruby is then picked up at the police station by a local official from the PM party, who release her.
It then comes out that Ruby has been at least three times at the PM’s “parties” and received several thousands of euros in gift (jewellery, etc.).
now you have the elements to decide wheter Berlusconi is a victim of an hipocritical press or he’s an old pig who breaks the law and endanger national security because he wants to &%$&£ underage illegal immigrants.
sdraio: but the Italian “reporters” are not reliable. I have twice sued for libel and twice won, for example. For years they reported that Berlusconi was in cahoots with the Sicilian Mafia, which was finally laughed out of court. So I suspend judgment, at least in the first instance, about the “accuracy” of these stories. What interests me are: the double standard (it’s ok when Clinton does it but not when Berlusconi does it); the cultural change (there were virtually no stories about Craxi’s love life, or anyone else’s); and the about-face on “puritanism” (it used to be our thing, now they have embraced it).
Mr. Ledeen – I don’t think you can say that “Italian reporters are not reliable”. Granted, a newspaper is not the Bible; but in the Ruby case, it was the Questore himself to confirm what happened, and the whole police station witnessed the PDL official escorting Ruby out from the station.
on Berlusconi and the mafia, I would remind you that on June 29 Marcello Dell’Utri, B.’s right hand for 30 years and co-founder of Forza Italia, has been sentenced to 7 years for “concorso esterno in associazione mafiosa” – he was the liason between Cosa nostra and Mr. B until 1992. it seems that B was paying for protection. this was a second grade appeal (we have 3 dfferent trials for each crime, and people usually don’t go to jail until they have done all 3). on first grade Dell’Utri was condemned to 9 years.
on double standard – I have to disagree with you, seems to me two very different stories – extramarital affairs vs orgies with underage prostitues. when does the private becomes public? when it involves national security, I would say
on craxi – don’t know, I was too young!
sdraio you will lose your Italian citizenship if you keep this up. do you really believe that Berlusconi can be blackmailed for running around with pretty girls? and do you really believe that Berlusconi was paying protection to the Sicilian Mafia? Then you should read “Il Processo del Secolo” which goes through the Andreotti trial on similar charges…and every journalist covering that case declared him guilty, but he wasn’t. sorry. I lived there too long, I know how it works.
Thank you for your reply to me, but this reply to Sdraio does not really address any of the issues that he raised.
That somebody wrote a book proclaiming Andreotti innocent, does not prove that Mr. B is innocent.
And anyway, should that be your top concern? should you not be more concerned that Mr. B’s policies go against nearly everything that American conservatives stand for?
don’t worry Mr. Ledeen no one gets ever punished for anything down here in Italy! except bums and illegal immigrants (some of them…)
Michael;
Please don’t fall into that European “it’s not a big deal” morals claptrap. Clinton was not brought up on impeachment for his antics with Monica, he was caught speaking falsehoods under oath to Congress. I don’t think too many folks, outside the fundamentals, cared too much about him getting some nookie outside the marriage bed, but we did care about the breach of trust. If the citizen can’t trust the man elected to the highest office to utter the truth while under oath, then we might as well burn the Constitution and be done with it.
He lied, was caught, and brought to trial. BTW, he was basically found “not guilty” by a wildly biased jury,,, he was not found “innocent”, there is a difference you know.
And,,, BTW, if I ever find myself in a position to confront the man, I will do so. Clinton was a disgrace as a man and as a President.
Slick Willy not withstanding, he condemned himself when he attempted to redefine the meaning of “is”. Really… How lame.
i am not falling into anything, heh, i am just pointing out various things…
One thought, since this blogspot is primarily devoted to matters Iranian…. The population and the press in the West goes into a frenzy, pro or con, when a Clinton or a Berlusconi express their libido in ways that many of us wish we could (maybe) if we posessed Kissinger’s ultimate aphrodisiac. Let’s be real GUYS. However this same press and these same people, for the most part, are either unaware or quiet about the historical and institutionalized use and abuse of catamites known as Bacheh Baazi by the sick shiite clergy who hold reign in Iran now. There is more fodder there for the press than the trangressions of some western leaders.
And, as I recall, the American military officer who directed the takedown of the aircraft and ultimate arrest of the terrorists was none other than Ollie North.
on sdraio’s version of ruby affair: she was underage, but berlusconi claimed he didn’t know it (and this seems quite reasonable, if you see her; or, also, if you think a moment on political implications… I should also add that sex with people 14+ isn’t punishable in Italy); she’s not an illegal immigrant (emphasis on illegal); and berlusconi assures he merely said he was told she was mubarak’s nephew… finally she was picked up by a member of berlusconi’s party, apparently as part of a normal procedure where an adult takes charge of underage people.
the story is of course controversial and more complicated than that, but it is also much more complicated that the previous short sketch.