They're coming to take me away, ho ho hee hee ha ha

Is it a circus? Is it a playground for elder people? Is it a clinical trial with 58 million participants and no placebo? A zoo? A huge open-air mental asylum? A new wickedly perverse reality show? A sociological rat test? A biological rat test? Or all of those?

Nah, not really. Just Italy, the same old.

Italy is my favourite lithmus test. Everytime I hear someone musing about the EU being a "community of values", or other metaphysical crap like that, and on such grounds arguing that some countries can never become EU countries because they don't share "our" "values", I just have to make an instant reality check and confirm whether Italy is still part of the same union. So far it has always been.

Societally speaking, it's an awfully underdeveloped, immature country. There are some nuanced differences between the North and the South, but in the scheme of things they are so trivial that you can just disregard them. And if our community of values boasts such a braindead zombie as one of its co-founders, I don't personally think that those great values of ours can be anything absolutely unmatchable. Not anything that Ukraine and Turkey, or Georgia and Albania, could achieve if given the right incentives.

One thing about that Mastella. I hope you non-Italians were not mislead by the way his and Udeur's defection was reported in some briefer pieces of news - you know, "resigned over corruption allegations". I mean, he did by no means resign because he concluded that the investigation had ruined his credibility as Prodi's Minister of Justice. No, of course he didn't; that would have been a really unItalian thing to do - that would have ruined his credibility. Instead, he said that he must leave the coalition because he had become a victim of political manhunt, ideological persecution, foul play, and that kind of stuff. Remember that, for it is telling and important.

As a laconic conclusion, now that I'm on it, let me quote The Economist on how things looked when the coalition was about to swear in and I myself was about to leave Italy for Albania:

One of these second-class ministers is a spirited former European commissioner, Emma Bonino, who will be Europe minister. She had wanted the defence ministry. Her failure to get it shows the problems created for Mr Prodi by his narrow victory—and suggests that his government may not last all that long.

Some on the far left opposed Ms Bonino's appointment as defence minister on the grounds that she is not against war. But the real reason she was blocked is that another, newly powerful figure wanted the job. Clemente Mastella, a former Christian Democrat, leads a party on the right fringe of the governing coalition that took less than 1.5% of the vote. But it has three vital seats in the Senate. And in the past it has signalled that it is ready to desert the centre-left if its demands are not met.

To break the deadlock, Mr Prodi gave defence to a close associate, Arturo Parisi. But to pacify the troublesome Mr Mastella, he handed him the even more prestigious justice ministry. Mr Mastella expressed delighted surprise. As well he might: for he is utterly unsuitable. More than once, he has chided prosecutors for their impertinent curiosity about political corruption. Only three months ago he was questioned at the headquarters of the national anti-Mafia directorate about his friendship with a man who admitted to helping the Sicilian Cosa Nostra's former “boss of bosses”, Bernardo Provenzano, when he was on the run.

Francesco Campanella, a town councillor in Sicily who turned state's evidence after being investigated, has acknowledged giving Mr Provenzano documents that helped him to go abroad for medical treatment. A year earlier, Mr Mastella was a witness at Mr Campanella's wedding.

Loosely related to that, and as it happens, one of my two housemates is an Italian, from Veneto. He's a good lad, and tonight we had one of his friends (also from Veneto) visiting and dining at ours. I was in my room, waiting for the food to be ready, when they asked me to come to the kitchen and drink a glass of red with them, for it was a very special moment. They were celebrating the fact that there may well soon be a new election. Which, of course, is a valid reason to drink wine, yet it nonetheless slightly struck me rather inappropriate that their underlying motive for this modest praise of Bacchus was the prospect of getting Berlusconi back to power. I commented something deliberately blunt, and they - genuinely curiously - asked why so many of us "foreign people" have a bad opinion of il Cavaliere. So we sat down and I explained them, why.

As for Romano Prodi, in him you have got a leader who - seriously - either talks to the dead or has collaborated with Red Brigade's murderers. I blogged a bit on it about a year ago. If you wish to know what I like about Italy, rather than what I dislike, watch that Buongiorno, Notte. It's a beautiful, profound movie.