Buon giornio!

My outrage meter is starting to hit red and stay there today. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, locked in a tight battle with a center-left challenger in elections scheduled for a few weeks, gave a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, addressing a joint meeting of Congress here Wednesday, warned sharply against what he said was a "politically dangerous" tendency in Europe to stand apart from the United States.

 "A conception of European unity founded on a fanciful wish for self-sufficiency would be morally suspect and politically dangerous," he said, according to an English-language version of a speech delivered mostly in Italian.

His comments appeared to be a scarcely disguised slap at the ideas of President Jacques Chirac of France, who has supported the notion of a "bipolar world" in which the European Union and the United States serve as counterbalances.

"The West is, and shall remain, one," Berlusconi said. "We cannot have two Wests. Europe needs America and America needs Europe."
 
The line brought a standing ovation.

Well, the line probably brought a standing ovation because of the big signs telling the Congress to cheer at selected moments. Because I don't think a whole lot of the Congress speaks fluent Italian. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) pulls the curtain back on this Potemkin speech:

Wednesday the Congress convened in joint session to hear an address by the leader of a major ally -- an infrequent and usually solemn occasion. Instead, I think we were cast as extras in an orchestrated political event for Italian TV.

We set aside legislative business and filed into the House Chamber only to hear right-of-center media billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speak in Italian with no interpreter. Organized applause was prompted at certain points from the uncomprehending crowd (Members of Congress plus "blue-coated interns, sent in to fill empty seats").

C-SPAN snubbed the event -- a Joint Session of Congress! (Doesn't C-SPAN cover everything?) But the rousing reception aired live overseas, on Berlusconi's own TV stations, skirting his country's equal-time laws in a tough election cycle.

You may or may not know that Berlusconi owns practically every television station in Italy. When he needs the airtime, he GETS the airtime, even if he has to call in a White House chip to do it.

So to recap: the Capitol is used as a backdrop for a political campaign in a foreign country, and hundreds of Congressmen are tied up for an hour while cameras roll overseas.

Like I said, outrage meter peaking on red.