my fingers are still crossed and I anticipate serious problems in disentangling them if -as he has officially said last night. he will resign on sunday…

the authentic reason why he finally gives up (if he does, ouch my fingers..) is that financial markets have begun to severely hit his own listed companies and his ‘friends and family’ are negotiating a ‘truce’ with the magistrates so that he doen not pass the rest of his life behind bars…
so sad, so kitsch, so sordid…

Berlusconi’s narrative has come to what appears to be an end to his 16 year streak in the global political arena.
My sudden optimism relies on a number of explicit and implicit ‘enough is enough’ statements from his closer friends as well as from the Pope’s inner circles (rumors imply a procedure of excommunication..).

And maybe the final sanction will come in conjunction with the tea party in the US cashing in on Obama’s loss of narrative (see here http://www.prconversations.com/index.php/2010/02/obama-losing-control-of-his-narrative/).

Yet, while the ‘tanned’ President ( from a famous expression the Italian Premier used to identify the new US President in an official press conference in Moscow with his buddy Putin) will have two years to recover his narrative, the ‘cuckoo’ Premier will collapse with a big and hige BANG, and the media fan will infest Italian society with shit well beyond the Neapolitan area.
We Italians are not famous for chivalry (remember what happened to Mussolini in Piazzale Loreto in 1945…).
My friends, let’s buckle up and be ready to use a significant amount of toilet paper !
I cross my fingers….

Often I loose detachment in exchange of an irresistable attraction to evil… which sort of sums up my present atitude towards B&B (bliar and berlusconi).

Yet, in my country today, one either remains silent (but certainly we are not at the level of an Iran or what might be in South Africa if the proposed new press law becomes reality, or other less fortunate countries, in terms of freedom of expression) or is tempted to surf towards a farsical and caustic view of reality. We – or at least I… – seem to have lost that right to a sentiment of indignation versus the format of our political (?) discourse.

As for Tony Blair, I do not agree at all that the Cool Britannia program was poor pr at the time it was acted.
Above all, it was excellent politics, and began to produce negative externalities only after Peter Mandelson had left its helm… a classic situation where an organization loses its creativity and proceeds bureaucratically. A theme for another post, taking a critical look at institutionalization of pr….

Interestingly, if what Blair has written that you cite is true (and a lot of what is detailed as fact in the memoir is being criticised for being impossible eg timings relating to advice given to Princess Diana), then Blair praising Berlusconi for winning the London 2012 bid is an insult to the official professional public relations efforts (and vast amounts of money that has been spent).

However, perhaps all political biographies would be best seen as an example of personal rhetoric reflecting press agentry communications as they seek to gain the headlines to sell more copies. Or simply evidence of the rewriting of history in the style of the novel 1984.

Once more on Berlusconi’s cuckoo model of pr: a third party endorsement from Tony Blair, one of our now-senior colleagues.

In his recently published and highly debated memoirs, Tony Blair authoritatively endorses the effectiveness of Berlusconi’s cuckoo model of public relations.

While narrating a holiday period with his wife Cherie in Sardinia as guest of the Italian Prime Minister
- remember? It was when the latter was artificially growing his hair ..and probably of else .. besides the height of his shoe heels to appear taller .. and invented the use of a coloured ‘bandana’ that covered the otherwise ugly visual impact of his implanted skull … a fashion immediately adopted by many of his accolites and admirers –
Blair confesses the real reason behind his much publicized visit (a move that had much antagonised his Italian friends of the left, as well as his betrayed Chiantishire anglophile community where he had been vacationing since many years).

In that period the British PM was deeply involved in bidding for the 2012 Olympics in London and his experts had informed him that Italy’s Olympic authorities had much power in swaying the undecided of Africa.

In the book, Blair refers to the cuckoo model of public relations by saying that Berlusconi had developed a very effective process that consisted in listening very carefully to his (Blair’s) arguments and in committing to explore what was doable, but with no pledge of success.

Blair concludes that the London bid was won principally by the Italian PM’s behind-the-scenes pressures, and adds an admirer’s description of the latter’s relationship building qualities described in this post.

Today is one of Berlusconi’s darkest moments (from any perspective you choose…) of his career, that also coincides with Blair’s officialised transition from international political relations to international business relationships, … as much as the two may be considered distinct.
Of course, you will remember that, once removed from office, Blair had immediately opted for the classic revolving door path.
I recall with some trepidation JP Morgan’s press release announcing his advisorship in January 2008 that explicitely cited (as we say today….what an authentic and transparent gaffe!) Blair’s little black book as the fundamental motivation behind the assignment.
Blair had swiftly replaced that profile by taking up and publicising other UN and peacekeeping assignments, to the point that we all forgot he was in the meantime doing public relations for JP Morgan!

Now however it has been made official that the ex PM’s personal agency is dearly commercializing his little black book, and so we can readily accept him in our professional community!
An important antecedent, you will remember, was Henry Kissinger and his consulting company.
Of course they do not define themselves as public relators, but if the proof is in the pudding (in our case in the reason why client’s give you assignments..) then the JP Morgan press release tells it all.

So welcome Mr. Blair to our professional community.

On a more personal note: in 2004 in my acceptance speech of the very precious honorary fellowship received from the CIPR , I had expressed the hope that Blair, following his dramatic and tragic Irak war incident, would ascend to the European Presidency, as I believed at the time that he was the only European politician able to govern the consolidation of that region.
Although he recently went very close to this assignment, it did not happen, and we bear the consequences (mostly due to the British anti-EU faction..).
In reading his memoirs my impression is that he has profoundly changed his persona for the worst..
So … what better than to have him as a colleague?

To return to Berlusconi, I have a hunch that if his political demise should finally come, we will need to welcome (?) yet one more colleague…
but at least he has his own proprietary and rationalised model of practice, not inspired by any Alistair Campbell.

I am told by friends close to him that, following this post on prc more than one year ago and a more recent one here
http://www.prconversations.com/index.php/2009/08/on-berlusconi-again-when-advertising-and-information-find-a-synthesis-and-fiction-becomes-the-only-reality/
I was downgraded from the end of the list of his first two hundred enemies to the end of the list of his first three hundred.
Which might even make one think that he has a sense of humor…
Doubt it.

Yet, only a few days ago, a doctor friend told me that B. has two senile health issues:
the first is called priapic dementia (and I dwelled on this in my second post about him), but the second, that I did not know existed in medicine, is the verbal incontinence dementia.
He simply cannot stop himself from saying silly things…

Ironically, both of these dementias gratify the lower instincts of my compatriots and therefore his personal popularity remains very high, as he incessantly repeats every day, wherever he is, with whoever he is and whatever the issue.

I guess we all have our problems.