Berlusconi, the Italian asbestos – hey, at least he isn't gay!

Incredible, he's done it again! Despite all logical odds, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has again narrowly escaped defeat like some kind of reality-defying illusionist. But this is Italy, and perhaps logical odds were never the right indicators to use here. After all this is a country where the prime minister can cling to power even after he's been caught lying to a police station to release from jail an underage Moroccan erotic dancer he’s having relations with. This is a country where half of the administration can be forced to resign after corruption scandals, and yet the leader himself is still left standing triumphantly.

How can one explain this bizarre land south of the Alps? As has often been noted, few other developed countries would tolerate this kind of extreme behavior from their elected leader. In the past this blog has been routinely wrong in predicting Berlusconi’s imminent defeat. I just couldn’t believe that someone could hold on to power after these kinds of revelations were out there. Last year, during the prime ministers scandal-plagued divorce from his wife, allegations of sex with minors, hiring prostitutes and lavish orgies at Silvio's Sardinian villa were everywhere - and the prime minister didn't even bother denying them.

This is why when these revelations about the Moroccan belly dancer (pictured below) came out in October - and Berlusconi issued his subsequent defense of, “Yes I’m passionate about beautiful girls, but it’s better than being gay,” - I didn’t even bother writing about it. Yes, the fact that he got his Moroccan Lolita released from jail by telling a police station she was the Egyptian president’s daughter might have seemed like surely the final step too far. But I had been burned too many times by prematurely predicting Berlusconi's demise.