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March 09, 2006

Yikes

Boris Johnson sings Silvio Berlusconi's dubious but "not dull" praises in today's Telegraph, and mentions an amazing, er, faux-pas that I hadn't heard of:

Did you hear the Berlusconi joke about the man with Aids, whose doctor told him to take a mud-bath? "It won't cure you," said the doctor, "but you'll get used to being buried."

Now, if a British MP had used that joke, publicly or privately, it would, without question, have been the end of his or her career. It is tasteless in the extreme and politically incorrect to the point of insanity. I can imagine that sensitive readers will be shuddering with amazement.

But Berlusconi not only said it: he repeated it, and then said that his critics deserved to be buried themselves for their sense of humour failure.

I don't want politicians who make AIDS jokes. But a little backbone, and a little tolerance of backbone from the media and electorate, would sure be nice. Obscenely rich older men should be logical candidates, really, but our own recent experiment along those lines didn't quite work out.

Posted by Chris Selley at March 9, 2006 08:43 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Jason at March 9, 2006 11:44 PM

Posted by: matthew at March 12, 2006 10:47 PM