베를루스코니 막말 10 Top 10 Worst Silvio Berlusconi Gaffes

베를루스코니 총리 막말 10

 Top 10 Worst Silvio Berlusconi Gaffes

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. "Last night I had a queue outside the door of the bedroom...

There were 11 ...

I only did eight because I could not do it anymore."

 

Magistrates investigating entrepreneur Gianpaolo Tarantini for paying women to sleep with Berlusconi in 2007 and 2008, released wiretap conversations with the Italian Prime Minister, who boasts sleeping with eight women and laments his political obligations to Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel as interfering with his active "social life."

 

 

 

2. "It's better to be fond of beautiful girls than to be gay."

 

Reports of Berlusconi's involvement with 17-year-old belly dancer Karima El Mahroug, also known as Ruby, broke in late 2010. The teen told newspapers she received near $10,000 for attending Berlusconi's parties, which she later called "bunga bunga" parties. The term refers to sexually charged parties the Prime Minister supposedly hosted in Milan, but El Mahroug denied having sex with the Prime Minister. Berlusconi refuted calls for his resignation and denied any wrongdoing for his fondness of females — and managed to inject an offensive remark.

 

 

 

3. "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary.

But they should see it like a weekend of camping."

 

Berlusconi sparked controversy in 2009 when he quipped to a German television station that the 17,000 left homeless by the L'Aquila earthquake should view it as a camping trip. The earthquake was the worst for Italy in three decades and left more than 200 dead. He also later told a reporter that survivors "lacked nothing" in terms of support and aid.

 

 

4. "Italy is now a great country to invest in ...

Today we have fewer communists, and those who are still there deny having been one.

Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries."

 

During a visit to the New York Stock Exchange in 2003, Berlusconi touted the benefits of doing business in Italy for America's red-blooded capitalists: fewer commies and more comely, subservient women. The Italian leader's penchant for peppering his speech with sexist comments and references to his own virility ultimately landed him in hot water with the missus. In 2007, he told one of his Cabinet members — a former model — that "If I weren't already married, I would marry you right now." After his wife demanded a public apology for the "humiliation," Berlusconi obliged in an open letter in which he declared, "Your dignity should not be an issue: I will guard it like a precious material in my heart even when thoughtless jokes come out of my mouth."

 

 

 

5. "What's his name? Some tanned guy.

Ah, Barack Obama! You won't believe it,

but the two of them sunbathe together because the wife is also tanned."

 

After meeting with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle at the G-20 summit in 2009, Berlusconi returned to Italy bearing greetings from the President of the United States. Unfortunately, he also couldn't resist trotting out his favorite inappropriate joke, referring to both Barack and Michelle's (or as Berlusconi would say, "the wife's") complexions as a couple of great tans. The Italian Prime Minister had used the tanned line once before, just days after Obama's election in 2008 — calling the then Senator "young, handsome and suntanned." Funny, nobody laughed the first time either.

 

 

6. "We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization,

which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it,

and guarantees respect for human rights and religion.

This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries."

 

Asserting the West's superiority to Islam just days after the attacks of 9/11 struck many as emblematic of the sweeping generalizations that helped fuel the conflict in the first place. Arabs were apoplectic, and allies around the world rejected Berlusconi's comments, which undermined efforts to build a global coalition to confront terrorism. Berlusconi said his remarks were poorly translated and taken out of context.

 

 

7. "Mussolini never killed anyone.

Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile." 

 

Well, that's one way of putting it. Berlusconi's remark reads like a twisted euphemism, though in fact he was rejecting the comparison of Italy's fascist dictator — who exiled his political enemies to internment camps — to Saddam Hussein's willingness to execute foes. Still, defending as "benign" the despot who allied himself with the Nazis during World War II was a recipe for reopening old wounds in a nation seeking to shelve this dark chapter of its history. Critics savaged Berlusconi for the comment, which he made in 2003 to an Italian magazine, but the pol simply shrugged it off.

 

 

 

8. "I am the Jesus Christ of politics.

I sacrifice myself for everyone."

 

An inflated sense of self-worth is embedded in every politician's DNA. How else can one account for the shared conviction that they're the right individual to lead their constituents? In this 2006 gem, Berlusconi flashes a pretty outrageous persecution complex. With his bombastic style, massive fortune and legendary vanity, Berlusconi (one of Italy's richest men) doesn't appear to have much in common with the guy he's name-checking. Then again, Jesus wasn't properly appreciated in his time either.

 

 

9. "I'm getting out to mind my own f---ing business,

from somewhere else, and so I'm leaving this sh---y country,

of which I'm sickened."

 

A police investigation into extortion charges revealed a phone conversation with Berlusconi and Valter Lavitola, the editor of a small newspaper and one of the men accused of bribing the Prime Minister. In the conversation, Berlusconi erupted into anger and denounced his country. Italians were outraged by his comments but the Prime Minister shrugged it off, calling it "one of those things you say on the telephone late at night."

 

 

10. "I am, and not only in my own opinion, the best Prime Minister who could be found today.

I believe there is no one in history to whom I should feel inferior. Quite the opposite."

 

In October 2009, the constitutional court overturned a ruling that allowed Berlusconi to have immunity from prosecution while in office. The verdict reopened two corruption cases, and in a press conference, Berlusconi declared himself the most "legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide."