Director Feltri,
I read your article on Biden (or rather, on senile dotage) with great interest, also because I felt involved, given my age of 88 springs. I would like to point out that this phenomenon is not always due to advanced age, also because I know many young people who could compete with me. While still maintaining a minimum of lucidity, I was able to “admire” on two occasions some young men who with one hand drove a fairly large motorcycle and with the other read on their cell phones. I have now collected an infinite number of similar examples. If this is judged only as imprudence, it means that I have lost the meaning of words. This is nothing because, on the occasion of an ANPI party in Bologna, a former Prime Minister (and I am not saying a little) like Conte stated textually: “In 2026, in Bologna, there was the Matteotti crime”. One of your few colleagues who revealed the fact wrote that the only correct word in the entire sentence was “Matteotti”. Conte, challenging the ridiculous even more, replied that it was a slip of his. I ask you what sentence Biden uttered that can be compared to the one cited above. I also ask you what would have happened if a sentence like that, mostly overlooked by the media, had been uttered by Meloni or Salvini.
Best regards.
Luciano Fossati
Dear Luciano,
the press, which nowadays genuflects with astonishing speed and ease, pampered and exalted the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, especially during the epidemic, when he assumed the role of absolute tyrant, giving birth to decree after decree in which one day he locked up and the other day he allowed an hour of fresh air to millions of Italians, who distanced themselves from the M5S and from Conte himself from that very moment, having had enough of the late-night press conferences, the schizophrenic decrees that created tangled problems of interpretation as well as the exasperated protagonism of a vain and paternalistic Prime Minister. And yet I remember the polls that wanted Conte to be the most popular Prime Minister in history, the most loved, the most appreciated by Italians. It was all bullshit, as the facts later demonstrated. So I am not surprised that the bullshit coming out of the mouth of the “people’s lawyer” was not emphasized, but rather that it was passed over in silence in order to protect the image that the newspapers themselves outlined and gave us of Conte, of whom the only thing I admire is his casual ability to put his pocket square in his jacket pocket.
You are right. If it had been Giorgia Meloni or Matteo Salvini who made certain statements, some newspapers would have made the opening and their words would have been the subject of unsustainable television debates, which would have bored the poor viewers probably for days and days. After all, we know that in Italy everything that comes from the left is considered right and everything that comes from the right, instead, is considered unjust.
Coming to the specific subject of your letter, at your request, I cannot at this point refrain from reporting some phrases uttered by the Democratic candidate Joe Biden which, indeed, raise some doubts. In fact, I will limit myself to reporting one. The outgoing president claimed on live radio that he is the first female and black president. You will agree with me that Biden is not black nor female. Net of all this, that is, of the confusion that dwells in the mind of this man who I would not vote for regardless of his political orientation, my editorial intended to denounce the prevailing tendency to create discrimination based on anagraphic data. A usage that I consider even more serious and unacceptable in a society that is becoming increasingly older due to the progressive extension of life expectancy. In short, the elderly are increasing but this is not accompanied by greater attention to them, on the contrary a sort of intolerance towards them is growing, people would like to exclude them, hide them, eliminate them, take away their political representation, active and passive, an antidemocratic and crazy proposal that was put forward a few years ago by the founder of the Five Star Movement, the comedian Beppe Grillo.
I have come to the conclusion that it is not the old who are indigestible, but it is old age that is scary, even though it is something that everyone, if they are lucky like us, will come to sooner or later, realizing that being penalized and ghettoized and insulted because of age is not at all pleasant. Do not say that Biden cannot be president because he is old. Say that he cannot do it because his presidency has not enthused Americans and he proves to be too weak compared to the other candidate, the Republican one, his direct rival, Donald Trump, who is more or less Biden’s contemporary.
Youth, like old age, is not a merit or even a virtue. You can be young and stupid, just as you can be old and reliable, as you specify. You know, I also see the idiots on two wheels or on scooters, focused on their phones and not on driving. However, today youth has been elevated to the rank of value. So if you are green you are worthy, if you are gray you are to be thrown away. It is said that old people are a social burden, that they take away jobs from young people, that they consume pensions (which they have paid for and earned), etc.
Yet with our pensions we often feed entire families, including grandchildren and children who, rather than go to work like we did, prefer to attack our pockets, with the excuse that there is no work. Who then is more inept and useless? And these generations even have the audacity to insult us. Allow me to doubt that often what is lacking is not work but the desire to work.