Italy's Silvio Berlusconi Delights Italians, Infuriates Wife
Gaffe-tastic Berlusconi Popular Among Italians, With One Big Exception -- His Wife
Berlusconi's History of Gaffes
Not content with the publicity he has generated for more than a decade, Berlusconi once sent his biography, in the form of a glossy magazine, to every single family in Italy.
Roberto Benigni, the Oscar-winning actor and director of "La Vita รจ Bella" (Life Is Beautiful), once said: "[Berlusconi] is someone who always wants to be in on the act. He wants to be everywhere. He wants to be the star. There is a meeting, he talks. He goes to a wedding, he wants to be the bridegroom. He goes to a funeral, he wants to be the deceased."
At the start of Italy's presidency of the Council of the European Union in July 2003, Berlusconi told Martin Schulz, Germany's member of the European Parliament, "I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I shall put you forward for the role of kapo," a concentration camp prisoner chosen for low-level administrative work. "You would be perfect."
During his 2006 electoral campaign, the leader of Italy's right-wing coalition said of left-wing voters, "I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many pricks around who would vote against their own best interests."
On the television show "Tg2 Punto di Vista," when a young woman asked him how she was supposed to get a mortgage or start a family without a permanent job, Berlusconi told her, "You should perhaps look to marry a millionaire, like my son, or someone who doesn't have such problems."
"Berlusconi is a serial seducer," Beppe Severgnini, author of "La Bella Figura, a Field Guide to the Italian Mind" and a columnist for Corriere della Sera, a major Italian newspaper, told ABC News.
"He is a worker among workers, and a peasant among peasants," Severgnini continued. "He is just like many average Italians. He jokes, he boasts, he speaks about women all the time. In many Italian typical environments there is someone like him. In every local cafe, you'll meet someone like that."
"He is like an average Italian man, but multiplied by five," he said.
And for now, no matter what the papers say about Berlusconi, Italians seem to like their "average guy multiplied by five" just fine.
