Un grandissimo uomo...

Italian TV has a poor reputation however its entertainment value is underestimated; everyone is always in a good mood, the conversation is light, there's an endless procession of good looking women (there are always some hunks on hand for the females in the audience too) and there's just enough spice, or beloved polemica, as the locals say, to keep you on your toes at all times.

So it's Saturday evening and I am surfing pointlessly on the internet while quiz show, Fratelli di Test, the Italian version of Test the Nation, is on in the background on Rai Uno. The host, Carlo Conti, reads off questions in different categories and introduces a historical one by asking the audience to watch a quick video showing "four very great men" ("quattro grandissimi uomini' - note the use of the -issimi superlative ). Twenty to thirty seconds of black and white footage follow with John Lennon's Imagine playing in the background showing a succession of 20th century historical figures - Martin Luther King, Ernesto Guevara, John F. Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. As the video ends the following question appears on screen (this is just a capture from RAI's website where you can take the televised test yourself online).
Who said that, "nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind"?



Wait. Hang on a second, there's something that I don't get. What's Ernesto Guevara doing in that list? I suppose that he qualifies as a man and arguably even as an icon, however I don't think that a cold-blooded and violent revolutionary like him is a grandissimo uomo and he certainly would be the last person who would have been quoted saying something like that.
On the contrary, Guevara's main concern, as with most pacifists (?!), was that someone would pick up his gun and keep on shooting it if he fell!

On a slightly less sarcastic note and even if it's just a game show, I do find that putting him in the same category as Martin Luther King and Gandhi is irresponsible didactically and an insult to the memories of men like the latter who despised violence. Even a more controversial figure like Kennedy can at least be credited with having helped to avoid a global nuclear war - a cataclysmic conflict that Guevara and his sandbox pal Castro would have been greatly responsible for.

They say that winners write history books, but why is it that communists are the only ones who have lost and/or created social and economic havoc (read injustice) everywhere, yet are still able to infiltrate culture and politics at all levels to peddle their lies and brainwash people?

Yankee go home!

Random ramblings on happenings in Italy...

Elements of the reliably hysterical hardcore Italian left are going into high gear over an agreement between the government and the United States to expand the latter's military base in Vicenza. Though the satanic US government would be pouring millions of dollars into building contracts which would stimulate the local economy, some people are more concerned with fighting alleged American imperialism than cooperating with a long-time ally, regardless of misgivings over US foreign policy. The fact that 700 local jobs would have been lost, as the U.S. military wants to consolidate the 173rd Airborne Brigade in one location and would have gone somewhere else if the government had not authorized expansion, seems to be of little concern to people with such high ideals...

Incidentally, an incoherent rampage by Emilio Franzina, a communist Vicenza town council member, is being sent all over the place in Italy and it is recommended viewing for anyone who understands Italian, it's a classic example of left-wing hysterics and empty "idealism". The man immemorably rants for six minutes non-stop about everything and anything, yet the only items of substance that came out of it were, apart from his predictably ideological (read anti-American) opposition to the base's expansion, is his being especially upset that he had cut his vacation short to come back to Vicenza to debate the military base issue when they mayor wasn't even around. Oh yeah. That and that he made sure to end his little speech by saying that he loved America. Where have we heard that one before?