Selfless statesman Berlusconi would rather not govern Italy

If Berlusconi had it his way, he wouldn’t be bothered with the pesky task of governing Italy. The only reason he puts up with the supremely vexing job is to keep the communists out of power, he told CNN.

“I’m doing what I do with a sense of sacrifice. I don’t really like it. Not at all,” he said. “Very often there is a lot of dirty dealing; there is really the gutter press, worse than that, the shameless and sickly. It’s a difficult life to be responsible for leading the government in a country like Italy.”

Note: By dirty dealing, he wasn’t referring to bribery. By the gutter press he wasn’t referring to secretly taping a judge to smear his choice in socks.

Being hounded by the press takes its toll on the 73-year-old. He claims the press, not that he attended the birthday party of an 18-year-old model who calls him “papi”, destroyed his marriage.

The press also has completely made up all of gaffes. The times he called President Obama “tanned” or the time he kept German Chancellor Merkel waiting while he finished a call on his cell phone, or the time he screamed over the Queen of England to get the attention of Obama, none of these were anything but stately and appropriate.

“I never made any gaffes, not even one,” he said. “Every gaffe is invented by the newspapers.”

MARIO LAPORTA/AFP/Getty Images