{"id":1030,"date":"2009-12-15T13:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/12\/berlusconi-and-italys-dark-heart.html"},"modified":"2009-12-15T13:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T21:39:00","slug":"berlusconi-and-italys-dark-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/12\/berlusconi-and-italys-dark-heart.html","title":{"rendered":"Berlusconi and Italy&#8217;s Dark Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SygCjpe0x_I\/AAAAAAAAAlQ\/_GTu3pJvdZE\/s1600-h\/Forza_Italia.png\" imageanchor=\"1\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SygCjpe0x_I\/AAAAAAAAAlQ\/_GTu3pJvdZE\/s200\/Forza_Italia.png\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>IN the &#8220;couldn&#8217;t happen to a nicer guy&#8221; department comes the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/14\/world\/europe\/14italy.html?_r=1&#038;scp=2&#038;sq=berlusconi&#038;st=cse\">recent attack<\/a> on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in Milan. The attack broke two teeth and fractured the media mogul&#8217;s nose.<\/p>\n<p>Italy and its culture are very close to my heart, but this nation does not have a very good track record when it comes to governing itself. And for all the soaring wonders of Italian art, literature and opera, the pop music utterly sucks.<\/p>\n<p>British journalist Tobias Jones captured these contradictions, as well as the insularity and xenophobia that lays behind the charm, in a book which became a success d&#8217; scandale. <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2004\/aug\/18\/entertainment\/et-book18\">HERE<\/a> is my review of the sharply written &#8220;The Dark Heart of Italy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As with Barzini&#8217;s &#8220;The Italians,&#8221; which is very much about Mussolini &#8212; those chapters are laugh-out-loud funny, by the way &#8212; this book is about culture and society (especially of the north and Emilia-Romagna in specific) but with Berlusconi&#8217;s power and corruption sitting at its center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IN the &#8220;couldn&#8217;t happen to a nicer guy&#8221; department comes the recent attack on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in Milan. The attack broke two teeth and fractured the media mogul&#8217;s nose. Italy and its culture are very close to my heart, but this nation does not have a very good track record when it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[348,35,93],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-berlusconi","7":"category-books","8":"category-italian","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}