In addition to the Suviana tragedy – yet another tragedy announced, yet another massacre at work due to legislation that favors profit in the face of workers, and also in the face of Art. 1 of the Constitution – two pieces of news, in recent days, among the many that crowd the newspapers, have caught my attention.
One, in fact a catchphrase, concerns the future of Mr. Amedeo Umberto Rita Sebastiani, better known as Amadeus, television presenter, host of five Sanremo festivals which broke every audience record and also marked the triumph of non-music, of non-melody, of non-harmony, in the name of digital simplism and the market, bringing the sounds of rap and its surroundings to triumph. I have absolutely nothing against Amadeus, who, as a professional, was able to smell the wind and put the bow of his ship in the right direction: that of success. That’s what they paid him for, and that’s what he did.
But something has apparently broken in the partnership that linked the presenter to RAI, which after Fabio Fazio, Luciana Littizzetto, Corrado Augias, Luca and Paolo seems to be about to lose this audience champion too. Will he go? He won’t go away? And if he leaves, why will he? For money? Due to misunderstandings with a RAI which has now become Tele-Meloni? Whatever. The fact is that Italian newspapers, despite the risk of a third world war, the massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, the creaking Ukrainian resistance against the Russians, the unworthy detention of Ilaria Salis in Hungary, seem unable to think of other.
The other news that struck me concerns the reasons for the sentence with which the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria disintegrated the investigation which, in the first instance, had sentenced Mimmo Lucano to 13 years of imprisonment, declaring him guilty of criminal association, fake, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and god knows what else.
This news, unlike that regarding the future of Amadeus, must be looked for with the lantern. Yet the first sentence had caused a great outcry. The model of hospitality and humanity, of attention towards the least fortunate and of reviving communities destined to vanish into thin air, which Lucan had invented and which that sentence had submerged under a mountain of manure, had been indicated throughout the world as an example virtuous and noble. Then came the rain of insinuations, accusations, slander, which had resulted in a proceeding that the public prosecutor had transformed, in fact, into a trial of the (alleged) intentions of the accused who according to that magistrate, beyond the of embezzlements of which he accused him, he had acted with a view to promoting his own political ambitions. Such an accusation was just as inconceivable, in a state of law, as the conviction that followed was incredible, to the jubilation of Matteo Salvini and all the other racists and xenophobes (of which there are many) of the Bel Paese.
Then came the appeal sentence, which that mountain of manure swept away with almost three hundred pages of reasons, leaving standing only – almost as if to justify a criminal proceeding that in reality should never have been carried out – a light sentence of 18 months for forgery, with a suspended sentence: the Court of Appeal essentially conceded that there had been a slight administrative error, with very little criminal relevance.
But Mimmo Lucano lived through months of hell: removed from his town, he was even prevented from visiting his dying father. The racist and xenophobic right-wing press attacked him with the ferocity that it usually reserves for those who are not racist and xenophobic, the first sentence fell on him like a boulder, transforming him in the eyes of the people from the generous and disinterested gentleman that he is into a foul profiteer and hoarder of public funds; and in the meantime that press overlooks the misdeeds, the full-blown and obvious ones, of political exponents devoid of shame and a sense of decency who, for example, during the pandemic, had redundancy payments paid for employees who were actually at work and who distorted the financial statements of their companies.
Everyone is therefore anxious to know what Amadeus will decide to do, but dead silence on Mimmo Lucano. Not that this is surprising: since the time of Nero, Italy has been the country of “panem et circenses”. People are interested in knowing where Amadeus will go, what will become of Ferragni and Fedez, how he will end up between Totti and Blasi, who will host the next Sanremo festival.
Certain politics, and the press that supports it, live on these things. It puts the monster on the front page, only to forget about it when it turns out that the monster was actually an honest man, and gives people silly news about characters whose only merit, very often, is a popularity acquired without particular talents and without a plausible reason. Is it the fault of that politics and that press? Certain.
But it is also the fault of the people who, in politics and in the press, listen to him.
Giuseppe Riccardo Festa
