Word: berlusconi
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Sort of a normal superman - at least as his story is told on his own stations. Mediaset shows will tell you Berlusconi has boosted the economy, brokered peace in Georgia and built new houses for the victims of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, whereas the opposition would, as one Milanese Mediaset viewer quipped, "still be arguing about the density of the cement." When the Prime Minister handed out the keys of new homes to quake victims in September, two popular shows were bumped from other channels to avoid a clash. Italy is now the only country in Europe whose leader...
...Berlusconi's media empire began with the local TV station for Milano 2, a subdivision Berlusconi built outside of Milan when he was a young construction entrepreneur in the 1960s. A pioneer of private commercial television in Europe, he then sidestepped Italy's antimonopoly laws banning national private television by buying up scores of local stations. With assets spanning Italy's largest publishing company, an ad agency and the AC Milan football team, Berlusconi built up his Fininvest empire to become Italy's richest man. In 1993 he entered politics, declaring his newly launched party to be a "pole...
There's little doubt of Berlusconi's appeal. In a country weary of political wrangling - it's on its 62nd government since the war - Berlusconi has successfully "tapped into nonpolitical sentiments," says Fabrizio Tonello, a political scientist at the University of Padua. Against the backdrop of the aspirational consumption shown on his television stations, Berlusconi's blend of ordinary Italian guyhood with the image of fabulously wealthy Don Juan is a potent one: "It's an entertainment culture," says Tonello, "the direct opposite of a political culture, in which only politicians who are celebrities can compete in the political market...
...Faces! New Ideas! After Berlusconi, Mara Carfagna is Italy's biggest politico-celebrity. At a September conference in Cortina of Berlusconi's party, fans thronged to pose with the Equal Opportunities Minister as their friends clicked away furiously on digital cameras. "There is only one person in Italy who has had the courage to put young people and women in politics," said Carfagna. "Thank you, Berlusconi!" Where his opponents sneer at Carfagna's appointment as a crude appeal to Italy's libido, Berlusconiani see it as a democratizing act in a country that's been run by old men. "Carfagna...
...pictures of Berlusconi's women on LIFE.com...