Pino Corrias: The Sense of Our Politics for the Ridiculous

This article is published in issue 38 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until September 17, 2024.

The grammar of power tolerates tragedy, often demands it. But it does not allow for ridicule. The fault of poor Gennaro Sangiuliano, Minister of Culture for 23 months, is all here.

The ugly end of the tear with resignation was built one day at a time through superficiality and vainglory, through his aptitude for involuntary comedy, which is the very antithesis of the public role called to cover “with discipline and honor”, where there is no privacy, much less pity. The blonde Maria Rosaria Boccia – forged in none other than Pompeii, where an entire world ended up in ashes, unlikely to scare her with some threat – has only perfected her already written destiny as an inadequate minister.

It was the pedestal that did not hold. It was that desire to rise astride himself that made his somersault so definitive. Prefigured from the first day of his new life, when he claimed to add to the plumes that the role assigned him the direct descent from Alighieri, in his opinion the “founder of right-wing thought”, provoking a shock of incredulity, not only for the fabulous joke, but because he was the only one to remain serious, while the whole of Italy laughed. He did even worse, in this mischievous summer, dressing up as the Latin lover, believing himself authorized and authoritative.

Even Silvio Berlusconi, who had planted his pedestal firmly in the rock of business, signed his fate when he invented that Ruby Rubacuori, a Moroccan minor, was Mubarak’s niece, or that the minor Noemi Letizia was the daughter of his old friend Craxi’s driver. Male winks and traditionally trained female indulgence were not enough to cover up the explosion of those comical lies and transform them into a slow, inexorable bradyseism of consensus. It was those ridiculous details – not sex in itself, the furious wife, etc. – that accelerated the withdrawal of confidence in the eyes of his electorate, which the judicial investigations, the trials or the suspicions of collusion with the mafia had not dented much. The dark ghosts of the “Godfather” mattered up to a certain point. What was unforgivable was the eternal Italian comedy that burst into the Palace with its intruders – Lino Banfi and the doll in the shower – to multiply the mockery and accelerate the eviction.

Our poor former minister, who has fallen into the news in the guise of Genny Delon, knew little or nothing about it. And now he is predicting conspiracies, promising lawsuits, asking for millions in compensation. He pretends to make his human case an inverted political case, imagining himself in the victim’s shoes. But the story is simpler. As a minister he took a lover. He tried to please her but failed. His wife found out. His lover took out her claws and emails. Now we are at the lawyers. Maybe not at the end credits yet. But the audience, who have finished their popcorn, are already leaving the theater, where another piece of Italy has gone to waste.

To subscribe to Vanity Fair, click here.