A pink Merlo sloshes on Wilders

If you can think like Francesco Merlo, opining for all he's worth in the Courrier International, then you should have a job as a bureaucrat at the UN or the EU or in a deep dark hole in the ground somewhere. Very likely you can't think like he does, and in that case you will shake your head and wish for an earthquake to open up and swallow all of the Merlos of the world in one big gulp, leaving only the empty bottles as evidence of the drunk-on-power lunacy they indulged in.

I'm still waiting....

"Wilders, a threat to freedom of expression in Europe."

In the Netherlands, the populist deputy Geert Wilders is threatening to broadcast his anti-Muslim film soon. Numerous Muslim countries have already warned the Dutch government that the broadcasting of the film could have perilous consequences. The Italian editorialist Francesco Merlo reacts to the polemic. "Is it possible that we Westerners will have to give in to the threats and ban the film simply because the thesis of the film is not to the taste of ayatollahs, imams and fundamentalists? A film that has yet to be released, that nobody has seen, but that is already endangering the world's security ... . However, promoting mediocre works of art, films and books that are gratuitously blasphemous and lift unsavoury characters such as Wilders to the rank of persecuted artists, is a way of killing freedom of expression ... ."
http://europe.courrierinternational.com/eurotopics/article.asp?langue=uk&publication=07/03/2008&cat=POLITICS&pi=6

Did I just read that a nobody Italian pseudo-intellectual has determined that he and his friends are the arbiters of public taste and of political commentary allowable in the free world? I do think that's exactly what I just read. Yes, arbiters make frei. What was I thinking. I should clear it with Merlo and his Philospher Kings before I venture another thought in my mediocre artsy fashion, unsavory character that I probably am. Shame on me for writing. Excuse me while I go punish myself.