Too Good to Ignore

By G8 standards, Italy is a strange country. To put it simply, it is a nation of octogenarian lawmakers elected by 70-year-old pensioners. Everyone else is inconsequential.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but Italy’s attempt to gag bloggers is actually getting some traction in the wide world outside. This article, from a journalism teacher at John Cabot University in Rome, tries to provide some background to this utterly wrong-headed law which, like the vast majority of laws in Italy, will presumably be ignored even by those who drafted it and voted for it.

What worries me is Bernhard Warner’s final paragraph.

And so I appeal to Italy's Communications Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, a former journalist himself, and Ricardo Franco Levi, the lawmaker who conceived of this wrong-headed bill. Is silencing the youth of this country really the best solution to dealing with a few squeaky wheels?

That sounds to me an awful lot like Henry II’s “will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?”. Does he really want Beppe Grillo, the squeaky wheel in question, offed?