James Moriarty, Hannibal Lecter, Silas Lynch, Simon Legree, Iago, Iscariot, Schettino… pity Francesco Schettino:
all but doomed by his name alone. What a great name for an alleged villain. The skipper of the Costa Concordia, the cruise liner now wrecked off a Tuscan island whose name sounds like a typographical tweaking of ‘gigolo’, presents an Anglo-Saxon media in search of cliché with an embarrassment of riches.
The disaster happened because (it’s claimed) Schettino was ‘attempting a “sail-by” salute to impress the islanders and passengers’. Tut tut. He fled his ship ahead of 100 passengers and crew. Boo hiss. He was ‘friendly with a Moldovan hostess’ who has helped the headlines by ‘denying’ she was having an affair with him. Tee hee. He tripped and ‘fell into’ a lifeboat before he had intended to leave his stricken ship. Yeah right. He was planning to return to the vessel. Pull the other one.
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