Buona fortuna, Nonna Maria!
May 10, 2009
MARIA DONATI
It’s only May, but I’ve already chosen my favorite political candidate of this year. It’s Maria Donati, who is running for a seat on the municipal council in Saludecio, a little town in the Italian province of Rimini. Signora Donati is 102 years old. According to a story in the newspaper “Il Resto del Carlino,” civic leaders in the town at first asked the signora if she was insane when she offered herself as a candidate, but then – by their own account – they pondered the ancient motto “Chi si ferma e perduto” – “Whoever stops is lost” – and changed their minds.
Sgna. Donati – popularly known as “Nonna Maria” – grew up in a large family in the Republic of San Marino. In fact, the elected officials in Saludecio now include many of her relatives. During World War II, the Nazis deported her husband, Poverelli Aurellio, to Germany. Although she was pregnant, and although the region was under air attack, she rode a bicycle to the headquarters of the Wehrmacht to badger authorities there about her spouse’s status. They were reunited after about a year.
SALUDECIO
The implication of the story in “Il Resto del Carlino” is that Nonna Maria never sits still as it is. She lives with her nephew and keeps busy with cooking and other chores around the house, but otherwise is likely to be off visiting neighbors – and now she will be involved in evening meetings with the other candidates.
Matteo de Angelis, who wrote the story, commented at the end that Nonna Maria’s candidacy shows that “nonostante l’età, tutto è possibile” – in spite of age, all things are possible. Stories like this always remind me of George Abbott, who died in 1995 at the age of 107. At the time, he was in the midst of revising the second act of ”The Pajama Game,” which he had written in 1954.
“Even at my age,” Nonna Maria said, “it is possible to propose many ideas.” And she might have said, especially at her age.
La dolce vita.
April 30, 2009
VERONICA LARIO
The defection of Arlen Specter, the impending confirmation of Al Franken, and the general disarray of the Republican Party all make for absorbing political drama. But for humor, the bunch in Washington have nothing on the Italians. The latest Over There is that Veronica Lario, the wife of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has publicly repudiated what she construes as her husband’s plan to trot out a team of female TV stars and a former beauty queen as candidates in the June elections in the European Union.
Lario, a former actress who knows about such things, said her sposo was exhibiting a “lack of discretion in his exercise of power which offends the credibility of all women.”
And she’s not being selfish about this. “I want it to be quite clear that my children and I are victims and not accomplices in this situation,” she said. “We have to endure it, and it makes us suffer.” (Note to the stimatissima signora, keep a close eye on those kiddies when they’re surfing the web. Some of those photos of you senza vestiti could be counterproductive while you’re protecting their moral character.)
SILVIO BERLUSCONI
Berlusconi’s version of this is that his party wants “to renew our political class with people who are cultivated and well prepared” — unlike the “malodorous and badly dressed people who represent certain parties in Parliament.” Not that it’s all about appearances – capisce?
According to The Times of London, this isn’t the first time the two have had – come si chiama? – “political” disagreements in public. Two years ago, it seems, la Prima Donna wrote an open letter to Berlusconi demanding an apology “after he was overheard telling Mara Carfagna, a former topless model and variety show presenter, that if he were single he would marry her straight away,” the Times reported today. Berlusconi did apologize, but he then included Carfagna as a candidate in last year’s national elections, and, when the party had won, appointed her – no doubt to demonstrate his committment to gender equality – minister for equal opportunities.
Put ‘er there, pal.
April 21, 2009
DICK CHENEY
Former Vice President Dick Cheney thinks President Obama has sent the wrong message by traveling to Europe and Latin America and suggesting that the United States is rethinking its recent foreign policies. Cheney said last night that Obama needs to distinguish more clearly between “the good guys and the bad guys,” which I learned to do when I was 10 years old playing cops and robbers with Mike and Joe Pellegrino. That’s how we think when we’re 10.
Cheney is dismissing what we learned from Richard Nixon, that pretending that your adversaries and critics don’t exist (Cheney said the Bush administration’s policy was to “ignore” Hugo Chavez) is seldom productive. Cheney didn’t like that Obama shook hands with Chavez. Nixon shook hands with Zhou Enlai because China’s fall-out with the Soviets created an opportunity for the U.S. with respect to both countries, and, I suppose, because Henry Kissinger’s earlier snub of the Chinese premier had gained the United States nothing. The old “good guy-bad guy” model seldom works. And the idea that Cheney casts himself and his kind as the “good guys” in this world is exactly the kind of hubris that causes more trouble than it solves.
He was nice to mice
April 14, 2009
Bo, a dog
One thing is certain: The president, no matter who he is or what he does, can’t win.
The Christian Science Monitor, for one, was reporting today that the First Man, if that’s the counterpart to the First Lady, is getting flack for accepting Bo, the dog, as a gift from Edward F. Kennedy after promising before the November election that the White House dog would be adopted from a shelter. This chatter is going on at the same time that folks are, on the one hand, giving the president credit for approving the use of lethal force against the pirates holding an American sea captain and, on the other hand, predicting that the same decision will result in escalated violence against Americans and American interests.
Andrew Johnson
With regard to the pet, the 44th president of these United States might have been better off emulating the 17th. Andrew Johnson discovered a family of mice that appeared in the Oval Office each evening. Instead of having them eradicated, he started leaving them bits of food. He got along better with those mice than he did with the Republicans in Congress, who would have lynched him if they thought they could get away with it.
Klavan. Any relation to Cliff?
March 31, 2009
RUSH LIMBAUGH
Andrew Klavan, the fiction writer and journalist, makes an interesting point in his “Limbaugh Challenge” column making the rounds this week. Klavan suggests that many people he characterizes as liberals, who are dismissive of Rush Limbaugh, probably have never listened to Limbaugh’s show and know what he says only through excerpts and sound bites – which Klavan maintains are edited precisely to make Limbaugh sound bad. When I was a fulltime journalist, readers often complained that I was a knee-jerk liberal, and I’ve also heard that complaint a few times with respect to my preaching. Those who made such judgments had never talked to me, and therefore had no way of knowing that I have many views that are hardly liberal. So I have a little context for this discussion from my own experience. I have a little more context from the fact that I have listened to Rush Limbaugh’s show many times, just as I have listened to Michael Savage and Sean Hannity. Truth be told, these fellows and I disagree on many if not most things, but I have found common ground with all of them at one time or another. Moreover, listening to them gets me to at least re-examine some of my own ideas, which I think is Klavan’s point. At the minimum, I suspect that Klavan is correct in his suggestion that people who publicly excoriate Limbaugh have only a cursory idea of what the man thinks and says. Limbaugh deliberately presents himself at times – as Lewis Grossberger once put it – as a “political vaudevillian,” and that makes it easy to simply write him off. But he represents and influences the viewpoints of too many earnest Americans to be dismissed simply as a clown.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-klavan29-2009mar29,0,5456892.story
Running the ball out of bounds
March 30, 2009
I came across a web site today in which George W. Bush was referred to as a modern-day Pontius Pilate. It was not intended as a compliment. The site was an elaborate comparison of Pilate’s administration in first-century Judaea and Bush’s administration in 20th century Texas, with the emphasis on the 152 persons who were executed while Bush was governor. The Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty – as it was opposed to the war in Iraq – but George Bush was invited nonetheless to address the students at Notre Dame University.
Although I voted for Barack Obama, I disagree with his policies on abortion. I have to wonder, however, if those who don’t think Obama should speak at the university also expect Notre Dame to exclude from the discussions going on in its classes and seminars – exclude from the content of any essay, term paper, dissertation – references to the work of any person – scientist, author, dramatist, theologian, philosopher, political figure – whose views differed with those of the church.
Does anyone seriously believe that because Notre Dame invited Obama to speak, the university doesn’t subscribe to the church’s teaching on abortion, or that a single one of those graduates will change his moral views because he hears a speech by the president of the United States?
As for the honorary degree to be conferred on Obama, if the whole man is to be recognized anywhere in our society, one would hope it would be recognized at an institution of higher learning. It’s true, as some have said, that Notre Dame must remain constantly aware of what it is to be a Catholic university, but it also must remain aware of what it is to be a university.
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