Conservative Badlands: Medvedev

The Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi showed some odd sense of humor when talking about the new President elect Barack Obama in Russia during a meeting with Russian President Medvedev.

I mean the outgoing Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is well known for his blunt language - a tendency to make what one of his predecessors, Massimo D'Alema, described as "planetary gaffes".

I mean he is known not to be too much a friend of the left, when he said during his 2006 campaign to left-wing voters:

"I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many pricks around who would vote against their own best interests."

So I guess he couldn't help himself, when meeting President Medvedev (and Berlusconi is not a fan of communists either -

"Italy is now a great country to invest in... today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries... superb girls."

This is what he had to say about Barack Obama as reported in the International Herald:

The Italian leader, who has a history of controversial remarks, was asked by a reporter about the prospect for U.S.-Russian relations, which have plummeted in recent months.

Berlusconi responded by saying that the relative youth of the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, 43, and Obama, 47, should make it easier for Moscow and Washington to work together.

Then he said, smiling, that he had told Medvedev that Obama "has everything needed in order to reach deals with him: he's young, handsome and well tanned."

I guess he didn't expect that people in the world would not understand his humour and he followed up:

News agencies said Berlusconi later defended the remark, calling the statement "a great compliment."

"Why are they taking it as something negative?" the ANSA news agency quoted him as saying in Moscow. "If they have the vice of not having a sense of humor, worse for them."

Later, Berlusconi told Sky TV-24 Ore that the remark was meant to be "cute," and he lashed out at those who don't see it as such, calling them "imbeciles, of which there are too many."

The Alien Patriot

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