In relation to the Miss Alaska pageant and all that, The New Yorker has a story (available to subscribers only*) about another admirer of feminine beauty in politics--Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who has survived some seventeen criminal trials without ultimately being convicted. According to the article's summary, when, in January, the prosecutor’s office in Naples indicted Berlusconi and issued a report depicting Italy’s state TV network, RAI, as an enormous casting couch that Berlusconi used to grant favors to aspiring actresses and to try to bring down the government, it had no impact. The difference with the US is that Silvio did win the last spring’s election. Obviously, Italians have a different sexual instinct than Americans.

Berlusconi has installed in the parliament, and even in his government, a number of former starlets who had gained fame in his TV empire. The article mentions Mara Carfagna, a former Miss Italy contestant who worked as a showgirl on Berlusconi’s TV stations before entering parliament. Also mentions Michela Vittoria Brambilla, another former Miss Italy contestant who is the Undersecretary for Tourism, and Mariastella Gelmini, the minister of education. Berlusconi talks openly about sex in public and his personal physician believes that Berlusconi’s biological age is actually fifteen years younger than his chronological age. Unfortunately, I am unable to copy and paste the New Yorker accompanying cartoon and I have no time for uploading games.

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Alexander Stille, Letter from Rome, “Girls! Girls! Girls!,” The New Yorker, November 3, 2008, p. 70