Now THIS is a sex scandal.

He’s the billionaire playboy in charge of a major European nation. Despite being on the nose, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi remains in power. It certainly makes political scandals in Australia dull by comparison. Despite mounting protests, the Italian shows no signs of giving up his philandering ways.

MM Contributor, Rick Morton writes:

Kevin Rudd went to a strip club, Julia Gillard declared she would become ‘real’ and Tony Abbott looked like he had rebooted for 24 seconds on national television following the now infamous shitstorm.

As far as political scandals in this country go, they’re about as sexy as a brick. Not even a brick in garters. Just a brick.

Further afield and the crisis of the search for democracy is enveloping the Middle East as citizens battle for the ideal of choosing the leader of their country.

And then we have Italy, where protests have erupted because their leader will pretty much mount anything that moves.

Not in the metaphorical ‘he must climb every mountain’ sense, but in the ‘he will literally fuck everything that moves’ sense.

Yes, we’re talking Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire pants-man who also happens to be in charge of Italy and own more than half of the nations media.

It’s a convenient set-up if you happen to spend more than 50 per cent of your time sorting applications for mistresses.

It seems only fitting that, from the land of the stallion-logo race-car comes a man of such indomitable sexual spirit that he just can’t keep it in his pants.

The remarkable thing, of course, is that despite his apparent erectile profligacy, there’s no electile dysfunction in sight.

No matter how angry his nation gets at him – and you would be too if your leader was having orgies during the Global Financial Crisis – they just can’t seem to remove him.

He survived a vote of no confidence in December with a giant grin on his face before, presumably, retiring to a boudoir decked with gold-threaded bed sheets and getting to know, Biblically, an entire roster of women.

This man is the Houdini of politics. The cockroach of public life.

There are allegations he had sex with underage women, essentially put hookers on his payroll, is corrupt or shonky in business dealings and the generally politically poisonous charge of being an awful Prime Minister in general but his approval rating has barely taken a knock.

As we speak, women (mostly, but men too) are protesting on the streets of Italy.
100,000 of them poured into Rome’s Piazza del Popolo to protest their leaders errant ways.

There’s no political spin coming from Berlusconi about the nature of the protests: the women brought along their own backdrop of a flaccid penis caught in a pair of scissors.

It’s not an elaborate metaphor for reining in of economic policy like laissez faire, it’s just a penis in a pair of scissors and you can bet your bottom dollar these ladies want to turn the Italian Stallion into a gelding.

The Europeans certainly know how to do scandal.

The Australian media, in a desperate attempt to find something to become outraged about, generally has to make do with one of our leaders either being very boring or achieving a status just slightly beyond boring but which is still pretty boring anyway.

That’s why the strip club was such a big deal.

That’s why we keep getting reminded about the fact Gillard chose not to have babies

(the monster!) and that’s why Tony Abbott might just be the best thing since sliced bread, on a good or a bad day.

The pinnacle of Australian political scandal was usually reached when two consenting adults had an affair (sadly, no orgies) or when Mark Latham punched a taxi driver before arriving at this destination of Complete and Utter Insanity.

But even when Mark Latham says something that sounds like he pulled the sentence from a scrabble bag (‘me no likey childless womens’) and we get to voice our entire dissatisfaction we’re still not anywhere close to competing with the pantsploits of an outrageous Italian leader.

The mere fact that an entire nation that shovels aphrodisiacs into its pasta like there’s no tomorrow have become incensed is generally a good indicator that Code Red Scandal has been reached.

In the meantime we’ll make do with the odd cuss word said in a war zone or the lively debate about whether the tears we saw in parliament were real, like we’re somehow discussing the rose oil tears streaming from a miraculous Virgin Mary likeness in a faraway church.

You know, because talking about the content of policies is just, like, yawn inducing.

How would you react if Berlusconi announced he was running for political life in Australia? Do his scandals put Australian scandals into perspective?