FIFTH COLUMN
by Marcello Veneziani
It wasn't a journalistic information program that was staged the other evening in Half past eight and Lilli Gruber. It was an abbreviated rite of the Inquisition, or worse, an exorcism to banish the Devil, Matteo Satanini, per century Salvini. Gruber finally had the corporate name of her program in front of her, the Obsession of every episode: the evil Salvini. There is no evening that does not contain a dozen venomous barbs against the Po Valley Ogre. Otto e mezzo's mission is to speak ill of Salvini and everything that could benefit him or lead back to him, rightly or wrongly. And the underlying reason for his program is fixed on the derivative theme: if the Grillini can be redeemed from Salvini's deadly embrace and if they can save themselves, and save Italy, allying with the left, with the Democratic Party. All guests must practice these two topics, it is their trial by fire, their entrance test. It is a fixed theme tour company.
But on Friday the Devil materialized in front of her and her exorcist assistant, who supported Gruber and looked for her approval and support with his eyes. Those that Lilli addressed to the Black Beast were not questions but sentences and there were no questions that did not already have the answer incorporated; any attempt at a different reply by the interested party was nipped in the bud, it was considered a diversion, an evasion, in any case something that deviated from the procedure (CRIMINAL) of the program.
In many passages, the presenter's anger and annoyance was evident, the tone was altered, the hysterical anger of his reactions was barely contained. In some places Gruber looked like an Austrian officer ordering the barrage on the Enemy. But the execution ultimately failed, indeed it backfired to the detriment of those who commanded it.
At the beginning of the programme, even those who had never had any particular sympathy for Salvini felt almost obliged to sympathize with him because the tone and style of the interrogation were embarrassing, the manifest hostility; nothing that vaguely recalled the journalist's professional ethics. It seemed like an attack to you, more than a comparison. With charges that bordered on criminal, in anthropological hatred, in human as well as ideological contempt. A contempt that spread to those millions of Italians who think like Salvini.
But then, along the way, the Orc's ability to block blows, to respond effectively, appealing to common sense, without major analysis; but above all the ability to smile, to cash in and not to get impatient in the face of the paramilitary attack of the driver - driver because it looked like he was driving a panzer, not a television program – he reversed the meaning of the program. And in the end Gruber and her field assistant aroused some human tenderness, because you realized that they were staying for free, professionally, humanely harming oneself. And the public opinion that followed the program, and not just that now large segment that follows Salvini, he found himself recognizing that Salvini was coming out better than his pressers. But why, I wonder, an esteemed professional, a good journalist, eat the Gruber (and eat De Angelis) it must lose credibility and respectability that way? Why does he have to let himself be overwhelmed in such a blatant way, at times disgusting, from his bilious partisanship and must compromise a long career in this brutal way? It's true that his program has been on the agenda for some time, called Half past eight by Giuliano Ferrara (in cahoots first with Gad Lerner and then with the excellent Ritanna Armeni, left-wing but another style), it should be renamed Three against One. Because the fixed formula of the program is as follows: two guests who think like Gruber and all three who bullshit, they ridicule, they prevent you from speaking, the third guest in the role of Target, mobile or fixed. Plus the pre-packaged bomb made to measure by Paolo Pagliaro. But recently Gruber took it up a notch and made a series of episodes that could be called Four to Zero, because there was no longer even the solitary contradictor, the scapegoat, the pluralist alibi. A sung mass, a choir. But with Salvini the Tyrolean fundamentalist has reached the lowest point.
I could wish Salvini ten hundred thousand of these media massacres because they resolve in his favor. But since I'm a professional, I'm no one's fan, I confess to you embarrassment and annoyance as a citizen, as a voter, as a journalist, as an observer. Maybe he will increase the number of votes but for us who have always loved the civilization of dialogue, it was truly mortifying. A program from Cairo and not only in the sense of its publisher.
MV, The Truth 10 maggio 2019
source – http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/e-a-lilli-apparve-il-diavolo/