Portrait (ironic?) Gaddafi by Roberto Di Ferdinando
In December 1973, Gaddafi was on an official visit to France. On that occasion, in Paris, called a press conference, came about 200 journalists waited for more than 6 hours, the colonel, however, was not see. The two writers, Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, journalist for La Stampa, took inspiration from this episode to make a parody of the character Gaddafi, but at the same time an elegant irony in the information world. Also a way to denounce the attitudes of superiority and boorish blowhard that Gaddafi reservations (?) To his interlocutors, the Heads of State or journalists who are (were?). The article, published in the Turin newspaper, owned by Agnelli, infuriated that he asked Libya without obtaining the dismissal of two journalists and the then director, Arrigo Levi, boycotted in retaliation for Tripoli's investment in Fiat and Italy. In these days of
blood in Libya, that portrait again topical.
quote here a part of the article published by La Stampa, 6 December 1973 and noted in the Corriere della Sera yesterday. RDF
"It seems that, given the press conference days ago by Colonel Gaddafi to two hundred Western reporters in Paris, there seems to have specialized by commentators and the general public attention it deserved. The journalists - tell Chronicles - were enraged because, for the 18 squad, Gaddafi had to wait in the street until midnight, at which time were told that the meeting was put off the next morning. A detail from anything that the reader, although the note, mechanically associated with those groups tumultuous photojournalist in shirt sleeves at the airport waiting for Elizabeth Taylor. I'm getting paid for it, no? But journalists were waiting to Gaddafi of an entirely different species, distinguished economists and Orientalists, philosophers and politicians, influential columnist, major newspapers for information. The scene is so very different and difficult: these guys still for hours and hours on the boulevard, mostly elderly and dressed in blue with umbrella and gloves are not accustomed to such treatment by a foreign head of state. The would happen, of course, to make a long hall, to take the fish's face, but always according to well defined rules of respect for the forms, appearances. More than "annoyed" is therefore likely to be heard "umiliatissimi. And the older of them, even frightened. Here we go again, it will be said with a shudder, recalling other heads of state in that time were not even close to the game of good manners. It matters little that the "strength" of Gaddafi and other Arab leaders as well as indirect, relative, coming from oil and protection of Russia. As the Commedia dell'Arte, History sudden in detail, but keeping a few ironclad mechanisms, always the same, with regard to the essential. And at a press conference in Paris, the elements of drama were all removed from office. On the one hand frivolous dandies, the other the bully with a stick. On the one hand the kind, spoiled, sophisticated, quirky and helpless children and grandchildren of European democracy, the other a mystical dictator who holds the knife to the neck and brutally shows to know. The rest is smoke, gauze, diversion, variant scenic irrelevant game of colored lights. The behavior of Europe to Hitler from 1933 to 1939 allows very few illusions about what we expect in the coming years, diplomatic, ideological, religious, cultural and everyday life. The chilling whisper beneinformato 'think' will return to clog up our ears. - It seems that Gaddafi is in fact a creature of the CIA. Does not move a finger without asking permission from them. - It seems that he does not count anything. Are those two priests who are always following leads that have everything in hand. - The speeches, which seems to them to him to write a surveyor Italian, some horses. Novara. - A religious fanatic? But imagine! Apparently, when he was guest of Tito, has eaten a wild boar roast all by himself. - No, he himself is an extraordinary man. It seems to work 22 hours a day. And he seems to have an ulcer, seems to be homosexual, he sleeps on a mattress of tobacco leaves, which keeps a harem of 48 wives in Switzerland, who loves Mozart, who can not suffer motorcycles and carnations. It seems, above all, that Italians (or French, or English, or German), we love, we estimated that we particularly admire, we want to sell, which already is selling even sneaking it ('it seems that in Genoa ...»), rivers of oil. The nauseating chatter will widen inexorably to include the 'Islamic path to socialism. " A slave trader, a killer of Cosa Nostra, may now legally exercise their profession if they had the foresight to hide in this wonderful fake Hoiisense invented by scholars of international politics. The UN itself is not a whisper would rise against a "street mafia" or a "slave route" to socialism. The "Islamic way", which the press conference turns out to be one of Gaddafi those doctrines that a child of ten could easily refute, will therefore be taken very seriously in Europe. Are always the children who say that the emperor has no clothes, the major will soon be putting together special issues of scholarly journals, showing how the "new" to "vital" to "qualitatively different" to "significant" and course of 'valid' there is in Marx that attempts to mate with Allah [...] "
The full text article is available on-line archive of La Stampa (www.lastampa.it)
