The news from Italy is that Silvio Berlusconi has been engaging in some wild
"Bunga Bunga" parties. Or so says a 17-year-old Moroccan belly dancer who attended one of these parties. No one is really sure what a Bunga Bunga party entails, except that Berlusconi apparently learned the practice from Muammar Kaddafi, and it has something to do with sex.
On Slate.com, Brian Palmer explores the mystery of
just what Bunga Bunga might be. The leading theory is that it derives from an old joke in which some western explorers are caught by a primitive tribe and offered a choice between Death or Bunga Bunga. I've actually heard this joke before. The punchline is that when an explorer chooses death, after realizing Bunga Bunga involves some kind of awful sexual torture, he's told that it will be "Death by Bunga Bunga." At least, that's the version I heard. On Slate, Palmer tells a slightly different version.
Anyway, there's a hoax connection here, because "Bunga Bunga" also happens to be the phrase uttered by Horace de Vere Cole and his accomplices while hoaxing the British Navy in 1910 during the
Dreadnought hoax.
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Y3pEBHdxg
(also, welcome back)
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=23999386
Berlusconi is pretty well scandal-proof. He had the same reputation before he was elected, and re-elected, as Prime Minister.
Saying Berlusconi is fond of orgies and prostitutes is about like saying W. is ignorant and bumbling-- nothing everybody didn't already know.
I'm not saying it's necessarily an incorrect generalization, just that it's one that I haven't seen it supported by anything more than anecdotes of a few (in this case, four) journals. Starting from a different handful of journals could lead to a very different generalization. For example, as I mentioned, none of the journals I have published in charge to publish.
I'm very much appreciate for it.