In an editorial yesterday, The Times criticized Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, for describing Barack Obama as “handsome, young and suntanned”.
The paper said:
“Susan Sontag did not live long enough to see that she had been too pessimistic in branding America “a passionately racist country” which would “continue to be so in the foreseeable future”. The world has tilted on its axis this week. But not everyone has tilted with it.
“In a week when Americans elected — and the rest of the world applauded — a talented and charismatic new president not because of the color of his skin, or in spite of it, but regardless of it, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, chose to describe Barack Obama as “handsome, young and suntanned”. Even for a politician famous for his gaffes, this sounded like an echo from an age when mastodons still roamed.
“And in a week when Formula One fans celebrated the triumph of a new world champion not because of the color of his skin, nor in spite of it, but because he is the most exciting young driver on the racetrack, Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One chief, brushed aside the racial slurs recently volleyed at Lewis Hamilton as “a bit of a joke”.
“Even after the awkward publicity generated by the private life of Max Mosley, Formula One’s other senior boss, Ecclestone’s remarks drag motor racing into a fresh trough. Hamilton himself found nothing amusing in blacked-up spectators in Spain parading as “Hamilton’s family”.
“As for Berlusconi’s claim that only “imbeciles” would fail to see that his description of Obama was a compliment, all you can say is, in that case, the world this week is full of fools.
“America voted and realized, almost as an exhilarating afterthought, that it had become color-blind. The world has changed. Yet at least two men remain too blinkered to see just how much.”
