Single for a Reason

Berlusconi has been on our radar for years as an aged, entitled and bloated party boy recklessly tossing aside duties to the Italian people for shadowy business relationships, corruption and blatant sex addictions (don’t worry, we’ll get to the bunga bunga parties). He’s also known for making ridiculous statements captured by the media. In 2008, for example, he complimented newly elected President Obama on his “suntan”, and in a meeting with leaders of Wall Street in 2003 encouraged investment in Italy because, ““We have the most beautiful secretaries in the world.” So clever! Barf.

This week he was recorded making a ridiculous statement yet again, particularly ridiculous in this case due to his rap sheet of exploiting women, and degrading homosexuality. Click Here to listen to the video.

For those who don’t speak Italian, Berlusconi states, “…that man realized that all of us are 25% homosexual. I am too, but after a deep exam of myself i discovered that my ‘homosexuality’ was lesbian.”

For 17 years, Silvio Berlusconi has held high court of Italy’s ruling center-right coalition. He is currently 74 years old. And yet, in recent years he’s become most known for the scores of scandals linked to him including mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption, bribery of police officers and judges, media censorship and exploitation of prostitution, including with underage girls.

Berlusconi’s history of sex scandals hit a peak in 2009 when he attended an 18th birthday party for Noemi Letizia, an underwear model, which led his wife Veronica Lario to file for divorce. Lario declared publically that her husband had a sex addiction problem and that she could no longer stay married to a man cavorting with underage girls and prostitutes.

On November 1, 2010, after he was alleged (yet again) to be involved in juvenile prostitution, he declared to an audience at Fiera Milano: “Don’t read newspapers anymore because they deceive you… I am a man who works hard all day long and if sometimes I use to look at some well-looking girl, it’s better to be fond of pretty girls than to be gay.” The remarks were immediately condemned by Italy’s main gay rights organization and women’s groups.

Nadia Macri, 27, who worked as an escort in Italy until 2009, is one of several women who has come out to speak about the “bunga-bunga” parties Berlusconi is now seemingly synonymous with.  “Bunga-bunga” parties are said to be a sort of underwater orgy where nude young women allegedly encircle (in Berlusconi’s case) the nude prime minister and/or his friends in his swimming pool. Macri testified that she was among a bevy of underage women present at these parties and was paid a total of €10,000 for having sex twice with Berlusconi. On one occasion, Macri was flown to Berlusconi’s Sardinian villa with around 25 other women. Each woman had her own bedroom and after dinner, she says, many of them had sex with Berlusconi or his cronies. A big shout-out to the Daily Beast for their terrific reporting on the emergence of “bunga bunga” parties in the world of Berlusconi. If you’re interested in learning more of the details, click here.

It’s always upsetting when a political leader is caught behaving as a liar and a cheat- disappointing every time. However this situation has become so unbelievably condemnable because it has gone on for so long. Imagine the sheer cost and pain thrust upon the people of Italy. And we’re not just talking about the poor women who had to see Berlusconi or one of his “cronies” in the buff.