Good Evening and welcome to the forth installment of Outstanding in the Field. A Sunday evening diary devoted to people powered politics or ordinary Americans who are making a difference.
Tonight's diary will leave American soil to look at a very entertaining story in last week's New Yorker. In BEPPE’S INFERNO A comedian’s war on crooked politics Tom Mueller describes an activist who is a cross between Michael Moore and Stephen Colbert.
As the founder of V-Day, as in V for Vendetta, V for Victory and especially V for Vaffanculo, Beppe Grillo has raised awareness of corruption in Italian Government. Vaffanculo translated to Fuck Off.
The message of Vaffanculo Day is being heard by the government and is being delivered from communities across Italy. This unofficial new national holiday is celebrated by two million people in two hundred and twenty cities across Italy.
Apparently this event is changing many Italian attitudes from "What are you gonna do?" to "We have to do something," and that should be an inspiration to many Americans.
Giuseppe Piero Grillo, better known as Beppe Grillo is the most popular comedian in Italy. He uses his comedic talents and a heavy dose of satire as a tool to fight for justice in government.
Beppe Grillo is also an active blogger. According to Technorati Beppe Grillo's blog is the eighth most read in the world.
Besides pointing his critical eye at the political corruption, Beppe’s blog offers a virtual parallel government, an alternate version showing how an honest government would work. There is a cabinet of volunteer policy advisers that includes some prestigious names.
His blog is a little more cutting that most and he probably would get troll rated around here. Once after he observed the fact that Japanese politicians accused of corruption have been known to commit suicide, he asked the Japanese people to accept a number of Italian politicians on an exchange program, in the hope of persuading them to do the same.
Grillo’s blog does wield some enormous power. He recently urged shareholders to send him their proxy for the next general shareholders’ meeting of the largest telecom in Italy and ended up becoming the largest voting shareholder. Of course the regulatory commission of the Italian stock market, ruled that the proxies had not been properly transferred and were invalid but that didn’t keep him from saying what he felt needed to be said at the shareholders’ meeting.
His life as a blogger reads like a fairy tail of people powered politics nirvana as he has taken up and succeeded with farmer, taken on banks and even delivered laws written by the people to the Italian government. His Clean Parliament campaign where he pointed out the convicted criminals in Italian government, the campaign that inspired Vaffanculo Day has impressed other governments and criminals were fired in India.
But the Italian government’s response is a law they are trying to pass that will curtail bloggers, one that is even more damaging than the American government's answer. A law that compels blogger to hire both a publisher and a licensed journalist and also extends the libel laws that keep the newspapers in check to bloggers as well so they can be sued into silence.
And Beppe Grillo is reaching beyond blogs. Realizing that a mere webpage will only attract people who have already developed an interest in politics he offers Italian families a day out of the house to see a famous personality rant against the Italian political machine.
According to Tom Mueller’s story this staged performance has galvanized the Italian people. There is even a story of a young girl playing hopscotch and singing the word she is only allowed to use on that holiday from corruption "Vaaa . . . fannn . . . cuuuuuulooooooh!"
...Grillo led the demonstration in Bologna, appearing in the Piazza Maggiore, the city’s largest public space, before a crowd of about a hundred thousand—more than had congregated there when Italy’s soccer team won the World Cup the year before. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved black polo shirt, and stood on a stage flanked by tall black panels decorated with blood-red "V"s. Behind him, against a cloudless sky, rose the crenellated Renaissance city hall with its squat clock tower. A large screen had been erected there, projecting the names of twenty-four convicted criminals currently serving as senators and representatives in the Italian parliament, or as Italian representatives in the European Parliament. Grillo read the names aloud, in alphabetical order, together with their crimes, which ranged from corruption, perjury, and tax evasion to more inventive infractions, such as fabricating explosive ordnance and aiding and abetting a murder. The crowd booed and jeered, raising their index and middle fingers in a V, for victory, or, whenever Grillo cried "Vaffanculo," their middle fingers alone.
"Paolo Cirino Pomicino!" Grillo shouted, citing a representative from Naples. "Corruption and illegal campaign financing—for which he was promoted to the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission! One day, Cirino Pomicino wrote me a letter, and I called him. He said, ‘Mr. Grillo, you are making a fundamental mistake. You are confusing justice with politics.’ " (Cirino Pomicino denied that this conversation took place.) Grillo paused. His face took on a look of wide-eyed surprise that gradually sagged into a mask of shock and sadness, then darkened into a scowl of disgust. "And I said to him, ‘Va-fan-culo!’ "
The rest of the story describes Beppe Grillo’s very interesting life history and explains how he became an activist. A deadly car accident played a part in this comedian’s choice to get critical. I found the 1989 incident, a stand up attack on the media to be very impressive. In 1994 he uncovered a telephone company scam and continued investigating fraud by pursuing tips given to him in letters from fans.
How a comedian works the pending doom of dairy conglomerate into a comedy routine is beyond me but he did and sometimes he was way ahead of everyone. On more that one occasion his insight was investigated and he had to explain to the investigators that he was using information in the public domain. In other words, they weren’t doing their job;
"I told the colonel that all you had to do was look at the financial statements. While I was at it, I brought him some documentation on Fiat, Telecom, and Fininvest"—three of the largest publicly traded companies in Italy—"so he could get ahead on his work."
Views are given from both his critics and his followers. There is a description of the corruption it the Italian government that sounds so much like American government to me, especially the media;
The country’s mainstream press is controlled, or owned outright, by political parties and corporations, whose malfeasance tends to be glossed over or ignored on television and in newspapers. (Grillo is organizing another V-Day, to be held on April 25th, to protest the subservience of the press.)
Only Italians get to choose from more that two parties.
I'm just glad this man exists and hope an American comes along soon to get people outside the netroots interested in how America functions.
Thank you Beppe Grillo.
Three cheers to Barack Obama’s showing in Maine. Now that 60 Minuets has finished grilling Obama on the issues and gotten a taste of Clinton’s big goals, why don’t you have a go at the rest of BEPPE’S INFERNO A comedian’s war on crooked politics. It is really a fun read and inspirational.