“Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,” writes columnist Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post, “has been accused of bribery, tax evasion, corruption and subversion of the press.” He makes embarrassing jokes and is at war with the Italian legal establishment. His wife has left him on the grounds that he consorts with prostitutes and holds orgies at his Sardinian villa. But one thing about him is known only to The Washington Post headline writers: he has apparently undergone a sex change.
Applebaum’s rather good October 13 column is entitled La Dolce Berlusconi, which is presumably meant to remind the cognoscenti of La Dolce Vita (“The Sweet Life”), the famous 1960 movie by Federico Fellini that showed decadence in contemporary Rome.
Unfortunately, use of the feminine definite article “la” makes Berlusconi female – as in “The Sweet Berlusconi Woman.” (The masculine equivalent is “il.”) So the Post headline actually appears to be about Berlusconi’s wife. Just another example of how the American media almost invariably slip up when they venture, even minimally, into a foreign tongue. Far better to stick to English – always.
