Beppe Grillo to enter politics?

Comedian/activist/blogger Beppe Grillo has stated in his blog that he is ready to enter politics, as a candidate for the left-wing PD (Partito Democratico). This after years of pronouncing conventional politics obsolete and ineffectual. Understandably, his prospective fellow party-members are somewhat bemused.

When I started this blog two years ago, the Beppe Grillo phenom was in full bloom and I had some expectations. Well, for me at least the flower has wilted.

In the meantime, Beppe the populist and regular-guy was found to have a decidedly non-regular-guy income. After having trashed the mainstream media on a regular basis, the MSM were only too glad to report that he pulled down the unpopulist sum of 4,272,591 euros in 2006. And this was before his major fame came in 2007. Light has also been shed to the effect that the grass roots movement was not so grassy after all. At the very bottom of the Grillo site home page, you will find the words "Credits: Casaleggio Associati." Why the English? Perhaps to obscure the fact that the site is not so much a personal blog as a product of viral marketing. It is the brainchild of a firm whose business is e-commerce, as you can see on its home page. Money, honey.

As for the viability of a party of grillini, as they call themselves. Take a good long look at his blog if you want to get a taste of what a Grillo-governed Italy would be. One person (Beppe in his posts) in the spotlight, ranting against almost everyone and everything. Followed by a disjoined mass of hundreds or thousands of commenters speaking about whatever they like. No real dialogue between Beppe and his commenters or between the commenters themselves. Hasn't this already been done in Italy? Isn't it in fact being done now?

The New Yorker does Beppe Grillo

I hate to feature a publication associated with that dreadful city to the south which so unfairly ruined our Super Bowl yesterday, but I really must.

I finally found the link to the (gasp!) New Yorker's article which appeared last week on Beppe Grillo. Good article, seven pages, in which the writer even follows Beppe around a bit. Only problem: in true American fashion, Mueller states that Beppe is an Italian Michael Moore, or a combination of Moore and Stephen Cole-Bear. Hah! This proves that the author doesn't get it, like so many people where Grillo is concerned. Including Italians. Beppe Grillo is unique and unprecedented. He is not an alienating or divisive force like Michael Moore (whom I dislike). Unusually for a European, he has consigned ideology and left-right dichotomies to the garbage heap, and is zeroing in on the real issues.

For this, he has earned the hostility of much of the Italian mainstream media, who first tried to ignore him, and then grudgingly allowed him some exposure. He will be repaying their dislike by organizing his next Vaffanculo Day against the media itself, to be held on April 25th. Should be quite interesting.

Beppe Grillo: semi-random, but not altogether unimportant, considerations

• Last week, Beppe posted to his blog that the Rom people (better known as gypsies) were a problem in Italy. As they indeed are. Predictably, a number of people came forth calling him a racist, a bigot, and an all-around bad guy.


• Beppe had already been immortalized on video (via the omnipresent You Tube) as saying that Right and Left no longer exist. While I consider this an overstatement, I agree with the gist, wholeheartedly. And the Rom remark above is a good example. The so-called Left got incensed, but these are just words. The fact of the matter is that the Rom prey disproportionately on the weaker socioeconomic classes. And there is no right (no pun intended) to illegality, which is the mainstay of Rom life. This is not a matter of Left or Right, it is a matter of common sense, and for the body politic, in the long run, a matter of survival. The same considerations go for us here in the US regarding illegal immigration.


• While I do not think that Left or Right are superseded concepts, I think that they are just that: concepts that may have a greater or lesser utility. Right now they have a lesser utility, even a negative utility, as the term "Left" has practically been voided of its content and has become a label to self-anoint the terminally self-righteous and hypocritical.


• Having said that (and it was a mouthful), I wonder why there is not more international interest in the Cricket (especially at the European level). But again, I strongly suspect there is no European level.

Who's afraid of the big, bad Beppe?

I'm talking about Beppe Grillo.

So, who's afraid of this man? Who, far from reminding me of a big bad wolf reminds me of a big gruff-but-cuddly teddy bear. Apparently, there are one hell of a lot of people in Italy who are shaking in their expensive shoes at his success on the eighth of this month.

Take Eugenio Scalfari. Please. He is the octogenarian founder of the Rome-based La Repubblica, a left-of-center daily, and one of the best and best-known journalists in Italy. He starts his recent editorial by saying that he has prudently waited to assess this phenom in order to get it right. Sure, Eugenio. He and almost all of his brethren in the Italian traditional media were purposely ignoring the blog-based Grillo Power hoping it would go away. And when it didn't and they knew their credibility (such as it is) was on the line, they decided to acknowledge the fait accompli.

So. Scalfari calls his editorial "Grillo's barbaric invasion." The Italians are not known for understatement. The gist of his article is that this is nothing new, Italians have always gone in for rabble-rousers and demagogues, and he barely stops short of invoking the M-word (you know, the well-known dictator whose bestest friend was an Austrian dictator), but that's what he's getting at. I personally can't think of any Italian who's less like Mussolini than Beppe Grillo. Maybe Saint Francis.

Scalfari goes on to tell us that what Italians still have to learn is to be part of a society as a whole and not in it for themselves selfishly, or through extended selfishness (the family, the political party). Actually, I think this is precisely what Grillo and his hundreds of thousands of followers are aiming at. In other words, it is Scalfari himself who belongs to the past, and who just doesn't get it.

Not that I, or anyone else, knows where the Cricket is going. I just know that this is something that is truly new, and time will tell.

It's the Eve of Vaffanculo Day

As I reported in July, tomorrow will be the quaintly-named Vaffanculo Day in Italy. Funny to see how the main newspapers are treating the unprecedented event with the R-rated name, avoiding the well-known Italian curse in their headlines and replacing it with the more peppy-sounding V-Day or the abbreviated Vaffa-Day.

First things first. This is a grass roots movement organized by comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo (his name means Joe Cricket). Ole Beppe has been a comedian a long time, and has always reminded me of George Carlin. The Cricket from Genoa has one of the most popular blogs in Europe (in Italian, with a partial English version), in which he rants and carries on about the numerous ills affecting the Bel Paese, from corruption to air pollution. He has inspired a following organized at local levels into meetups, and has electronically signed up 200,000 adherents for tomorrow's protests, taking place throughout Italy and even abroad, including the US. One of the main points will be to outlaw the presence of outlaws in the Italian Parliament, as there are a number of these gentlemen, convicted of serious crimes, ensconced there. Beppe himself will be in Bologna, the epicenter of the Italian Left (such as it is), and will have to compete for attention with the funeral of Pavarotti which will take place in nearby Modena.

I like Beppe, as a comedian and as a "political" figure. He has managed to do something rare for the European "Left," that is, take their mind (at least partly) off their obsession with the US and place it squarely where it belongs, on themselves, their very real and pressing problems, and the urgent need for solutions. We'll see where this leads.

For the special occasion tomorrow, another site has been set up to monitor the event as it takes place.

V-Day is coming!

"The eighth of September will be Vaffanculo Day, or V-day. A cross between D-Day's debarking in Normandy and V as in Vengeance. It will take place on Saturday, 8 September on the streets of Italy, so as to remind us that since 1943, nothing has changed. At that time, the King was in flight and the whole country was a mess, now we have politicians bunkered down in their palazzos, much occupied with "cultural" issues. V-Day will be a day for information and participation by the people."

Firebrand and comedian Beppe Grillo (inset) is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. Check out his blog, one of the most popular in Europe. The Eggplant will report to you on the upcoming day of wrath.