THE UNPURITANS:

Breaking All the Rules, With a Shrug and a Sigh (IAN FISHER, 2/14/07, NY Times)

The shrugged shoulder is real, a daily reminder here that part of Italy's charm rests in the fact that it does not much care for rules. Italians can be downright poetic about it, this inclination to dodge taxes, to cut lines, to erect entire neighborhoods without permits or simply to run red lights, while smoking or talking on the phone. [...]

But every now and again, Italians wake up to the unpleasant reality that whatever the reasons, however lightly it can be explained, breaking the rules is also part of Italy's malaise. Two weeks ago, a 38-year-old policeman with two children was killed during a riot at a soccer stadium in Sicily -- two years after a law mandating antihooliganism measures was passed and widely ignored.

Of 31 stadiums surveyed after the killing, only six were found to comply with the law.

In this case, a life was lost (though some skeptics noted that compliance might not have saved that life, because the riot happened outside the stadium). But in this and scores of other ways, contempt for rules ends up to be not so charming.

The Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries of Donna Leon do an especially fine job of depicting this lawlessness and its devastating effects on Italian society.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 14, 2007 12:00 AM