Yes, Silvio!: Berlusconi ruffles feathers -- the right ones.

In the infinitely gray landscape of Europe, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, is a blob of color and energy. Why, he speaks his mind as though he thought himself Donald Rumsfeld. Therefore one funny thing after another happens to him.

Italy has just assumed the presidency of the European Union, a role whose occupant serves a mere six months before turning it over to some other country. As temporary EU president, Berlusconi addressed the European parliament at Strasbourg. There he found Romano Prodi, also a president, in his case of the European Commission. The Italian press customarily refers to these two political and personal rivals as "the odd couple." A self-made man, Berlusconi has an ex-film-star wife, a mansion outside Milan, a house in Bermuda, a yacht, and the multi-billion-dollar business empire he has created. From Bologna, Prodi has spent his life as a left-wing academic and pointedly rides a bicycle. "That nice cyclist," was how Berlusconi once referred to him. Besides their EU titles of president, what they have in common is that both have faced corruption charges in Italy, and so far gotten away with it.

At the Strasbourg parliament they were waiting for Berlusconi. In the chamber, a claque of socialists and Greens brandished placards with slogans such as "No Godfather for Europe." A French Communist called the Berlusconi government "barbaric," and some Belgian dug up a comparison to Attila the Hun. A German socialist by the name of Martin Schulz then accused Berlusconi of exploiting an immunity law to sidestep charges of bribery. This Schulz has a scrubby beard, and Berlusconi famously interprets physical traits as ideological statements. So he leveled with the fellow: "I know there is a man in Italy producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of leader. You would be perfect."

A deluge of sanctimonious protest broke over the continent. In the course of Berlusconi's successful election campaign, the London Economist had thundered that he was "not fit to lead the government of any country." Now everyone began braying that he was not fit to lead Europe. Prodi looked ashen-faced for days. Ambassadors were summoned. Calls for apology included one from Chancellor Schroeder on behalf of Germany. Though Berlusconi was accused of resorting to national stereotypes, scores of cartoonists gleefully caricatured him as Mussolini. Journalists filled columns with his alleged gaffes, for instance how after September 11 he had said that Western civilization is superior to Islam because it "has at its core, as its greatest value, freedom, which is not the heritage of the Islamic culture." It was equally and unforgivably racist that in some European forum he had once complained that the Finns "don't even know what prosciutto is." And one of his numerous bull's-eyes was to describe those same Strasbourg parliamentarians as "part-time democrats."

Italians vote for him because they appreciate hearing truths no other politician dares utter, and they rather like the swashbuckling style. Seeing that Berlusconi has obviously done well for himself, they hope that he can do the same for the country. The novelist Umberto Eco quipped that admiration for Berlusconi ...