I’ve been reading a really trashy biography of Frank Sinatra by Anthony Summers. It’s a fun read but it goes into Sinatra’s sex life in exhaustive, and exhausting detail, while omitting minor details like how important Frank was to American popular culture and music. The fact that he supplied hookers to JFK trumps that and it is, of course, fascinating in a lurid sort of way.

I thought of Sinatra’s seamy side when I read this in the Guardian:

Silvio Berlusconi risked renewed criticism of his selection of candidates for election when he unveiled a list that included a MissItaly contestant, a former TV weathergirl and a showgirl turned dental hygienist.

Last
year the Italian prime minister hastily dropped a group of showgirls
from his list of candidates for European elections after his wife said
the move was “shamelessly trashy” and demanded a divorce.

But
Berlusconi, 73, who describes himself as a “single man” after the start
of divorce hearings, has returned to the fray before important regional
elections by putting forward Nicole Minetti, 25, the daughter of an
English dance instructor who settled in Rimini and married an Italian
businessman, Italia Caruso, a former Miss Italy finalist, and Giovanna
Del Giudice, who worked at a nightclub frequented by Berlusconi, became
a weathergirl on one of his TV channels and was among the women
hurriedly dropped from his list of candidates last year.

And we Americans think that *our* pols are low and depraved. Silvio has taken depravity to a whole new level. I’d like to thank the Italian Prime Minister for making our horndog pols look like pikers.

I wonder if Silvio is consciously emulating the Chairman of the Board or if he simply cannot help himself. I suspect it’s the latter although Berlusconi might be more accurately described as the Chairman of the broads.<rim shot> He’s starting to makeAndreottilook good and that’s bad: