Re: Winners and losers

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> What evidence, if any, do you have that anarchist and autonomists are the
> Jerry Springer's of 21st century NSM's?

The Toronto Star
June 6, 1987, Saturday, SATURDAY SECOND EDITION

Porno star bares all as she woos voters in Italian election

By Ruth Gruber Special to The Star

ROME - Radical party candidate Ilona Staller is campaigning for Italy's
June 14 general election by removing her clothes, baring her bosom and
offering voters a bit part in her next blue movie.

Wearing a skin-tight, strapless tube dress, elbow-length gloves and her
long blonde hair held more or less in place by a tiara, Staller arrives for
campaign rallies in an open car driven by a chauffeur dressed to resemble
Jesus Christ.

Smiling and blowing kisses, and sometimes clutching a big pink teddy bear,
she makes her pitch for votes and then pulls down her bodice to uncover her
breasts.

Staller is better known to her constituents as "Cicciolina" - roughly
translated "Cuddles."

She is Italy's best-known porno queen, famous for her live shows in
provincial discotheques, her explicit videocassettes and her appearances in
skin magazines.

'Sexy but normal'

"I'm a Green by red light," is one of her campaign slogans, punning on the
use of the word green to mean ecologist.

The decision by the Radicals to run her on the ticket as a representative
from the region around Rome has created a furor - and immense press
coverage, including inevitable photos of a barebreasted, grinning
Cicciolina standing outside the parliament.

"I would like to make a film of my electoral campaign," she says. "A normal
film - sexy but normal - with everybody who voted for me able to take part."

The porn star for parliament campaign also offended many feminists - even
among other Radical party activists.

"I don't consider her a candidate, but rather the incarnation of
masculinism in politics," wrote journalist Viviana Kasam in the newspaper
Corriere della Sera.

The Radicals, a tiny party dedicated to iconoclastic causes, in the past
has run other controversial candidates, including TV star Enzo Tortora, who
was charged with drug trafficking, and Toni Negri, who lives in exile in
France to escape terrorism charges.



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