BUNGLE BUNGLED!
Italian mogul, political Lazarus, and party animal Silvio Berlusconi has died aged 86. Shockingly, the cause was leukaemia, rather than a Nelson Rockefeller-style exit. He muscled his way into the Italian elite with a string of successful business ventures, including founding dominant mass media corporation Mediaset and rescuing AC Milan from the brink. His businesses were soon mired in corruption probes, and he turned to politics to evade the heat.
Aided by his camera-savvy tan image and his ownership of most of Italy’s media, Berlusconi won the 1994 election in a short-lived premiership that was derailed by both shaky relations within the coalition and his lambasted efforts to rein in his prosecutors. The fractured political landscape swept him back into power in 2001, and he held control for most of the subsequent decade. His new tenure took place among a largely stagnant economy, and was replete with controversy: sexist gaffes, a downplaying of Mussolini, chumminess with Putin, passing a (later overturned) law shielding him from prosecution, and above all else the “bunga bunga” sex parties where he engaged with prostitutes, some underaged.
His scandals combined with the 2008 financial crisis seemed to pen his political obituary, and after 2011 he was out of office and never out of court. He was convicted of tax fraud in 2013 and banned from public office for six years. Last year in his mid-eighties he staged a final comeback, winning a Senate seat and propping up Giorgia Meloni’s frothing fascist coalition as the relative voice of reason(!). Still, at least no other country has to deal with a brash tan businessman-turned-leader embroiled in never-ending corruption scandals.
Berlusconi’s leukaemia diagnosis would’ve brought forth a veritable orgy of pickers had his battle had any staying power, instead politicos theme team Baby Kissers Taking a Big Sleep enjoys a solitary wank.
Silvio Berlusconi
29 September 1936 – 12 June 2023, aged 86
💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 10 POINTS