YOU'RE BETTER OFF BEING NIGERIAN?:

‘Add to the fact they voted for a PM who makes Bush look like a statesman with gravitas, no wonder Italians are giu (down)’ (Duncan MacLaren, 11/30/03, Sunday Herald)

[A]ccording to a recent scientific poll published in a reputable Italian magazine (they do exist), the happiest people on Earth are the Nigerians and the most miserable sods in Europe are the Italians. One in four people in the bel paese is unhappy with life – and that’s without being gutted in international football. Such unhappiness, say the pundits, is a sign of deep-seated psychological malaise. Italians were happier in the Sixties when the family was stronger, Fellini was making films of global renown and vast motorways were being thrust through mountains and over steep valleys as symbols of the new technocratic might of post-fascist Italy. It’s all been downhill since then.

“After all, look at us now,” declaimed Graziana, also known as Grace, parfumière extraordinaire and chardonnay grappa imbiber, in a Trastevere wine bar. “We have the lowest birth rate in Europe because women prefer their own Smart car to children. I can count on only three (beringed and usually with cigarette poised) fingers of one hand the number of decent Italian film directors around, and our only good actors are dead or nearly so. And these days our engineering skills are such that houses often collapse without the excuse of an earthquake.

“Add to that the fact that we voted for a Prime Minister who makes Bush look like a statesman with gravitas, then no wonder we’re giù (down). Where is the Italy of high culture and engineering genius? Where are the great writers? Where is the dolce vita?” (I can almost hear her say) “Wherr’s wur anima?”

On discovering that the happiest people in Europe were the Swiss, Grace went ballistic and one of her rings flew off her hand hitting Arturo the barman in the teeth. All she could blurt out contemptuously was that their best-known dish was melted cheese, that they spoke the language of drowning cows and were responsible for what the Italians call ‘il blackout’ (stress on the ‘out’ and with the breathy hint of a vowel after the ‘t’), when the peninsula was plunged into darkness for up to 24 hours in September, forcing Romans to camp in the metro stations overnight and imprisoning some temporarily in lifts.

Not quite Wells:

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

but not bad, Grace. Unfortunately, all of Europe is becoming Swiss--more in love with secure peace and quiet than with the tumult of freedom.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 30, 2003 4:32 PM