Backlash is mounting against the vice-president of the Italian senate after he celebrated Italy’s World Cup win over England with a vulgar Twitter outburst calling English people “pretentious pricks”.
Maurizio Gasparri, former minister of communications under Silvio Berlusconi and one of the media mogul’s most loyal party faithful, posted a tweet at 2am local time from Salerno, just as Italy’s victory over England was sealed. It was retweeted at least 70 times: “It’s always a pleasure to say “go ... themselves” to the English ... pretentious and pricks,” he tweeted
“It’s always a pleasure to say go “…” to the English … pretentious and pricks.”
Mr Gasparri used the word coglioni which is literally translated as testicles, but is used as an offensive means of calling someone a prick or an arsehole. He left a blank where the Italian term for “fuck yourselves” was the obvious phrase missing.
As the comment spread via retweets and in the Italian mainstream media, he responded to calls for him to apologize or step down with the following clarification: “Detestable English, is that okay?”
Mr Gasparri, a centre-right politician who is also outspokenly anti-immigration, is one of Italy’s most gaffe-prone politicians. He has repeatedly offended fellow ministers, journalists using social media. After Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, he famously said on RAI that with Obama in the White House “al-Qaida is happier”, drawing jeers from his political opponents. The criticism for his less than decorous language and behaviour online grew sharper in the wake of Sunday’s comments. A columnist for Wired Italy suggested it was high time the embarrassing politician be banned from Twitter.
“After the insults toward the English – calling the foreign minister, journalists, ex-ministers and everyday citizens ‘pricks’, it would be appropriate to take Twitter out of his hands for awhile,” wrote David Allegranti in Wired Italy. “For his own good, and also for ours …”
Gasparri’s tweet was one of 7.2m about the Italy-England match. Mario Balotelli may be known for his unpredictably mercurial personality, but he kept it classy and positive on Twitter with a simple: “Forza Azzurri! Let’s continue this way! Man of the match today so happy! A big Thanks to my team mates!…”
