President Barack Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama welcome Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to the G20 dinner on September 24, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.
My latest piece for the Daily Beast takes a look at the grimly entertaining Silvio Berlusconi:
Were you to be so unwise as to combine the political shamelessness of Mitt Romney, the personal morality of John Edwards, the ego of Rudy Giuliani, and performance art that is Sarah Palin’s career on the national stage, you would create a monster that approximates, but still cannot quite match, Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister, who arrived in the United States this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly and the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, is often, no usually, dismissed as a joke. Like the Porter in Macbeth, his role is to provide a moment of levity in otherwise grim and serious times.
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