Word: berlusconis
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What's a swinging Prime Minister to do? Two weeks after Italy's Silvio Berlusconi silenced a storm of accusations about his private life with his statesman-like hosting of the G-8 summit in earthquake-stricken L'Aquila, doubts about his suitability for office refuse to die. On Monday, audiotapes surfaced of a high-priced call girl's alleged conservations with Berlusconi and a Bari businessman accused by Italian prosecutors of pimping for the Prime Minister...
...Published on the website of the opposition weekly L'Espresso, the tapes apparently feature several conversations that Patrizia D'Addario says she secretly taped with Berlusconi before, during and after the night they spent together at the Prime Minister's private residence in Rome. Berlusconi has said he doesn't recall D'Addario and has denied ever paying for sex. Giampaolo Tarantini, the Bari entrepreneur under investigation for alleged prostitution and corruption, maintains his innocence, saying he brought attractive women to the Prime Minister's residences only to make a good impression. (See pictures of Berlusconi at the recent...
...salacious details of the Prime Minister's alleged dalliances for weeks. But hearing what D'Addario and L'Espresso says is the voice of the 72-year-old Prime Minister may make it harder for the public to believe his version of events. A male voice, which sounds like Berlusconi, speaks intimately with the woman, telling her to wait in the "big bed" - apparently a reference to a gift from Vladimir Putin - while he goes to take a shower. When the same man calls D'Addario the next morning, she reports that she's losing her voice. "And we didn...
...Addario, who identifies herself as a high-priced prostitute, made the recordings with her cell phone. She says she has handed magistrates the Berlusconi recordings, as well as recordings of calls with Tarantini, in which he advises her of how much she will be paid and the fact that Berlusconi doesn't use a condom. "You're not going as an escort, though, but as a friend of mine," Tarantini tells her. (Read "Berlusconi and the Girl: No Spice, Thank...
When leaders understand the nature of their followers, they can get away with an awful lot. My friend Beppe Severgnini, a columnist at Corriere della Sera, says Italians forgive Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's many--how shall we put this?--lapses in judgment because they think, He's one of us. Berlusconi, Severgnini wrote this year, is "not only Italy's head of government, but the nation's autobiography." By contrast, when a leader gets out of sync with her followers, all the brilliance in the world doesn't amount to much. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher found that...