Berlusconi and political discourse in Italy

I've been meaning to post a link to this for a while and have kept forgetting.

A few weeks ago Nora Galli de' Paratesi wrote about Silvio Berlusconi's use of language for ItalPolBlog.

Nora's critique is biting. An excerpt:

When one reads his speeches, the image that is evoked of his voters, his accolytes and himself is the one of spotty, podgy preadolescents with knobbly, cold, red knees running around screeching in the school playground. An encouragement to regression, amusement and superficiality, and therefore a special communicative channel between him and "my voters". That, he thinks, allows a prime minister to use public television time and resources to be close to "his people" in the domain of Neverland, rather than use his image and energy for the domain of politics as a dignified, serious realm of ideas to which his actual role should confine him.

As the saying goes... the whole thing is worth reading.