Heath Ledger

I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent talking about Brokeback Mountain. The film took us all back to the story, or to the story for the first time; Annie Proulx’s wonderful story. But there was also the partisan aspect of identification. Who were you? Who would you have loved? What would you have done? On the one hand, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal); on the other Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger). There’s something not only ironic, but cruel about the names Proulx gave them. Jack Twist, who never wavered, whose love for Ennis was constant and insistent; Ennis Del Mar, who refused to adapt, sea-like, who refused to go with the flow. Giuseppe and I and our friends divided into factions, in the mildest sense. I was with Jack because I’ve never had any doubt that what counts is love, and let the rest go hang. But what Heath Ledger did was make the doubts of Ennis so real, and so valuable, that even the most partisan understood what it must be like to not be partisan; understood what it must be like to contain the other within oneself, as Ennis did. Jack was simple; Ennis was what resisted simplicity, for the worst and the best of motives. In the hands of a lesser actor, Ennis would have been the villain, the spoiler. In the hands of Heath Ledger, he broke my heart.

A Chavez story that doesn’t mention Naomi Campbell

There’s a rather odd piece in today’s New York Times about middle and upper class Venezuelans fleeing the country in fear of Chavez, to settle in South Florida. They’re compared in the article to Cuban exiles, on the run from Castro. What’s odd about it is that none of the people interviewed actually seems to have been personally affected in any way by Chavez. The first ‘exile’ apparently decided to stay in the US to avoid the repercussions of a labour strike organised by Chavez’s opponents. Yes, not by Chavez – by his opponents. The rest of them seem to have been merrily exporting their wealth in suitcases over the past few years, not because of anything that has been done to them but because they’re afraid their lifestyle might suffer. Well, yes. It’s hard to have to do without domestic staff and chauffeurs. But, with the indomitable spirit of the formerly parasitic, they struggle on. After all, they don’t want to be forced to live in a country in which a democratically elected leader does what he says he’d do – sorry, imposes his socialist vision. As opposed to having a capitalist vision imposed on the country by those notoriously undemocratic insitutions, the WTO and the World Bank.

Bananas

As predicted in my last post, Clemente Mastella has withdrawn his three (yes, that’s right, three) senators from the Italian senate, depriving the Prodi government of its majority of two (yes, that’s right, two). The government’s been looking like a house of cards in a gentle but insistent breeze for some time and this will probably be the final puff, though there is a slight chance of a ‘technical’ (as in, non-elected) government being cobbled together to vote through some sort of electoral reform. The only good that might come from such a solution would be an electoral law that prevented self-serving ingrates like Mastella from holding the whip hand with their fistfuls of bought or bartered votes.

It was clear from the beginning of this legislature that the greatest threat to its survival came not from the left, responsible for bringing down Prodi’s first government, but from the centre, a haemorrhoid-like cluster of mini-parties, most of whose leaders are, or have been, investigated for corruption, favouritism or collusion (Mastella, Dini, Di Pietro). The left has had to grit its teeth and vote for any number of unpalatable provisions simply to keep Prodi in power. It’s seen parts of the electoral manifesto – such as support for civil unions – scrapped. It’s even toed the line over foreign policy decisions that would have brought Prodi 1 down in two shakes of a snake’s tail, alienating substantial chunks of its own electorate in the process. To its credit, it’s understood that real politik is based on compromise, rather than unbending principle.

Not that the centre’s obstructionism and wheeler-dealing has had anything to do with principle. The way Mastella and his merry gang have behaved over the last two years, as though the Italian parliament were part of their personal fiefdom, is simply cringe-making to watch. There is nothing such men wouldn’t do to be able to continue to dispense largesse and rake in the profits from it, which, as often as not, have as much to do with the exhilarating buzz of power as they do with cash. (Not that they’re short of that.) There are rumours already that Mastella and Berlusconi are brokering some squalid little deal which will ensure the former’s political survival. To counter this, and to show the extent to whoch Italian politics is contingent on private interests, there is talk that some of the teeny-weenier parties of the right might, just might, be tempted to cross over to the centre-left and keep it alive for another month or so. Naturally, they’d be rewarded.

The cherry on the cake is that the head of the Italian Episcopal Council, Bagnasco, has informed the electorate (Italy’s electorate, naturally – the Vatican’s subjects don’t get to vote) that the church will not tolerate civil unions, etc. etc. Nobody asked him, he just thought he’d remind us. Oh yes, the church will also oppose any attempt to introduce the notion of gender into Italian law; apparently it remains entirely Christian to insult and disscriminate against gay men and women with impunity. How far the Vatican is from Fred Phelps and his God Hates Fags gang is a moot point. Richard Dawkins would say they’re the same thing and, until I hear an awful lot of dissent from grassroots catholics – something that’s signally absent at the moment – I’d tend to agree with him.

Today is the first birthday of my blog. I was going to celebrate but I’m sick to the stomach about all this. I’ve never been less in love with Italy than I am today. I don’t even want to begin to talk about the toxic rubbish in Naples. I’d be unable to resist a metaphor that’s better left implicit. I’ll just post a picture and you can do the creative business yourselves.

No corruption? No party!

Italian politicians certainly know how to celebrate. Totò Cuffaro, centre right, president of the region of Sicily (see left: modelling a coppola, traditional Sicilian headgear, in a probably mistaken photo-op), was convicted a couple of days ago of having favoured individual Mafia bosses and sentenced to five years in jail. What did he do? Apologise? Resign? Take off his coppola and hang his head in shame? Did he buggery. He waved his fat grasping hands in the air with joy, said he had no intention of leaving his position, then treated his chums and colleagues – and no, you can’t see the join – to champagne and cannoli siciliani (see right: the missing cannolo? Don’t ask). He had every right to be happy, as far as he was concerned. He’d been acquitted, for insufficient evidence, of the far more serious charge of association with the Mafia. Let’s face it. What’s a little favouritism?

If you want to know the answer to that question, ask Clemente Mastella, centre-left Minister of Justice until three days ago. Having been told that both he and his wife were under investigation for big-time favouritism, he actually did the decent thing and resigned. The gloss of this good action is slightly tarnished by three considerations.

First, he’s been itching to do it for months and can now position himself for the next government, increasingly likely as a result of his resignation. Second, he said that neither he nor his wife (president of Campania regional council) had done anything wrong, as in: hey, everyone does it. He can’t see why it’s wrong to use his power to fill important positions with his friends and hangers-on. He just doesn’t get it. Third, he made a speech in parliament in which he declared his own innocence, obviously, and accused the investigating magistrate of, to say the least, malicious incompetence. This, from the (ex-)Minister of Justice.

In any normal parliament, his speech would have been met with embarrassment, scattered boos, a general drift towards the bar. Here, it was greeted with wild cross-party applause. The man’s a hero.

God help us. Pass the party hats.

Clubbing

Two UK book clubs, Books Direct and Book Giant, have decided to put Little Monsters among their choices. This is wonderful news, and I’m duly thrilled. But what I’m most fascinated by is the way the book is slowly getting sexed-up as it creeps towards publication date (sooo, sooo slowly). The second half of the plot summary on both sites is taken directly from the jacket, but the first half starts: My Father, the Killer, and continues:

Written in tight, sparkling prose, Little Monsters is an extraordinary tale of murder and its aftermath. Haunting, powerful and brilliantly evocative of teenage life, this is a must read for fans of Alice Sebold.

I haven’t read any Alice Sebold. Maybe I should. But whether I do or not, the idea that I should be a ‘must read’ for fans of any author who’s sold as many copies as Sebold has is, to say the least, exciting.

Multitasking

I’ve no doubt Ratzinger had a word to say about family values to the masses gathered today beneath his balcony. He works so much better with a friendly audience, even when they do know most of the jokes. There’s a cosy feeling about watching an aged transvestite going through his paces, like warming the hands over a fresh cow pat.

But I’m getting distracted from the purpose of this post, which is to draw your attention to a post on the fabulous Jesus’ General blog. It’s entitled ‘Family Values: Proud that Working People Can’t Make Ends Meet’. Anyone who’s read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (and if you haven’t I recommend it) will know what it’s like to survive as a low wage earner in the States, but even Ehrenreich doesn’t mention that, for some politicians and, er, Christians, people who need to do more than one or two jobs to survive are a sign of just how great the country is. I’ve stolen the picture from it. Here’s a quote to whet your appetite:

President George W. Bush himself told a divorced mother of three on Feb. 4, 2005: “You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.”

Precious things

Patrizia Casamirra isn’t just a great photographer (she’s even managed to make me look like a real author on the jacket of Little Monsters, though you’ll have to buy it to see). She also makes fantastic silver jewellery: necklaces, rings and bracelets. The materials she uses include amber, acacia wood, lapis lazuli and antique glass. They’re wonderful things to hold and to wear and you can find out more about them here.

ABB

This could mean so many things. I don’t know. All buns bleed. Amanda’s bulging biceps. Avast brown bear. Able bodies burgeon. Alice B. Boklas. OK, OK. What it actually means is Anything But Blair. Valery Giscard D’Estaing and Edouard Balladur, two French politicians who’ve covered the waterfront, in Tennessee Williams’ memorable phrase, have been talking about the EU presidency and they point out that the ideal man, or woman, for the job should come from a country that’s firmly committed to the EU, has adopted the Euro as its currency, does not behave like an over-eager poodle whenever the US says yo and, er, doesn’t support the war in Iraq. I wonder who they could possibly not be referring to?

You can find more details in today’s Independent here.

Party animal

http://www.youtube.com/v/xc0CB6URrV0&rel=1&border=1
This is for those of you who feel that all is not well with your teenage children. You know who you are. Watch this and know. It could be so much worse.

Via Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish.

Dear Editor

I thought I’d write to La Repubblica to point out that the rest of the world (pace the horrified wailing of the Italian media) is actually not that interested in Ratzinger’s failure to show at la Sapienza. On the assumption that it won’t be appearing in tomorrow’s edition, this is what I wrote:

Contrariamente a quanto detto da quasi tutti i giornali e telegiornali italiani, la rinuncia del papa di presentarsi all’inaugurazione del anno accademico della Sapienza ha avuto pochissimo risalto nei media internazionali, almeno quelli di lingua inglese. L’assenza del papa, per motivi squisitamente politici, e lo scompiglio creato all’interno del mondo politico sono affari che riguardano il Vaticano e il governo italiano e poco altro. Meglio così? O l’amore proprio nazionale vuole che anche i piccoli disaccordi di famiglia attirino gli occhi del mondo intero?
(Contrary to what has been said by practically every Italian newspaper and programme, very little attention has been given by the foreign press to the pope’s decision not to appear at the inauguration of the academic year of the Sapienza. The pope’s absence, for purely political reasons, and the upset this has caused in political circles interest the Vatican and the Italian government and practically no one else. This is no bad thing. Unless, of course, Italian amour propre would prefer every family tiff to draw the attention of the entire world?)

If it isn’t published, I will, of course, claim to have been censored. Even better, I might just withdraw the letter first and then claim to have been censored!