Rai, open city. Journey to Viale Mazzini, between dreams and grievances of the right

Rome. Extraordinary edition. Viale Mazzini is “Rai, open television”. The Anglo-Melonians have landed. They’re bodybuilders and they’re black, but it’s just a Tiber-Mississippi tan. Roberto Sergio, next to Rai, the designated one, is their general Patton: “Hello, Rai. Hey Giorgia”. He has already changed his Facebook profile photo and Leonardo Metalli, correspondent of Tg1, was the first to congratulate: “Come on”. Promotion in sight? They use acronyms like in war. Giampaolo Rossi, future general manager of Rai, is in fact called “Gp”. We write from the Caffè Achilli, ex Settembrini, Prati district, reference café of Rai Pd, freed from the leftist “quadristi”. The patriot journalist of FdI, oppressed by the Usigrai regime, also offers cappuccinos to foreigners: “Ah, PD bastards. We have fun. Mo’ ve sfonno, ve sfonno”.

They yell, “We won.” They are photographed under the Rai horse with the “v” as a sign of victory. We have proof. In their wallet they keep the figurine of their favorite from FdI, Francesco Lollobrigida, “our number nine”. Director, isn’t it that we confused Rai with the Napoli football championship? The journalist, quota “Gp”, i.e. Rossi, assures us that it’s all authentic, “we are Rai”, and that now “that kid from the Democratic Party, I’m as big a husband. I’m forty-eight years old, ordinary editor, and he, only thirty-five, is editor-in-chief. Humiliation”. The kid would be a journalist from the Rai school in Perugia, who is clever, anvedi, already ad personam editor-in-chief, “as a gallopino de Bettini, Vettroni, and his mortacci. Pagnottisti. Did you see that yesterday, Elly Schlein did her first interview on a news program with Orfeo’s TG3? They aired it just when he was about to meet the premier. It’s already Rai Cuba. Shame on you”.

The phenomenon has not yet been recorded by the newspapers of the red block, that Gedi block with known “Czechoslovakian” complicity. The cry of the patriots, at Caffè Vanni, in Piazza Mazzini, is this: “Whoever does not skip Marco Damilano, is, is”. He would be the former director of Espresso and hosts La Torre il Cavallo on Rai3. In Via della Scrofa, headquarters of the Melonian liberation committee, substitute profiles are being studied: “I would see well, instead of Damilano, Veronica Gentili or Giordano Bruno Guerri. Nicholas Porro? But don’t you know that it exceeds one million euros? We can’t afford it. Poletti, Salvini’s biographer, also has a big contract with Mediaset. Instead, we must recover Marco Ventura, Berlusconi’s spokesman and Rai author”. It seems to be witnessing the foundation of the new Corriere della Sera. Indro Montanelli, it’s just for a joke. A Rai patriot, on the phone, mentions two unknown names, with a sure future: “One is Francesco Palese from Rai News and another is Francesca Oliva from Unomattina. They go up, they go up”. Those who believed in FdI will not be left behind. Bars of rigorously Italian chocolate are distributed around this building, the Palazzo Venezia dell’Information. No synthetic promises. The hairdressers have been precepted. They have been working tirelessly since the announcement of Fuortes’ resignation. In Rai everyone is dyeing. Bottles of dyes in the baskets. The journalists demand the “blonde conservative”. The request: “Dear, do you make Ggiorgia blonde for me?”.

Men, on the other hand, prefer the “Gp” style salt and pepper. All the hairless people of Rai shout at the poor barbers: “Stick some hair, make me look like Dino Grandi. Like who’s Grandi? He studies, ignorant ”. The fundamental book of this time is “Gli squadristi” by Manlio Cancogni. Obviously, a large Rai constituent assembly is being planned (far from reforms with Casellati!) but as in 1945, no one knows who is who, and who is what. Also in a salon, one of those frequented by Laura Tecce, presenter of the new program Underdog (key word of Meloni-Treccani) and face of right-wing Rai, it is discovered by a lady (who dotes on Pierluigi Diaco) that Tecce is not Northern League. Oh right? “Obviously not. First of all, he began working in the communication of Claudio Scajola, then in Rai with Amadeus, subsequently, he became a center-right commentator. And here’s the break.” The break? “Of course, until 2019 he is a Northern League supporter, but then he has crushes for Renzi, even for the 5s, now Rossi’s share”. Rossi’s share is already over 55 percent. In fact, it is already French presidentialism. At Rai there is a shortage of (armed) tanks to occupy. That of FdI is saturated: “I’m sorry, we are full”. Those who ask to go up claim: “I was writing to Il Secolo d’Italia, I’m a friend of Pino Insegno”. Nothing, it doesn’t work.

Director, this is not satire. It goes like this. It’s April 25, but upside down. In addition to the Rossi quota, there are three other quotas, FdI trend. There is that of Minister Sangiuliano, that of Chiocci, the predestined director of Tg1. The chigista of the flagship, who entered the Pd quota, passed with the 5s, now FdI, boasts of his wounds on the field: “I cannot be removed. I have the confidence of the government”. In Kiev, to defend Meloni, he reduced the Zelensky-Berlusconi dispute to a curiosity. Medal. A new share, the third, unpublished, (travels below three percent, but in Rai it can grow) is that of Francesco Filini, FdI deputy who sits in Rai Supervision, but above all liaison officer of undersecretary Fazzolari. Serena Bortone, from the Pd area, journalist and presenter, also dreams of meeting Fazzolari so as not to miss the afternoon of Rai1. “That’s why Salvini is back central. The truth is that FdI is sold out” explains the Italian mole, who owns the map. There are 25 posts to be filled in Rai, these are the main directorates. 25 seats, yum, yum. The scheme is this: “17 our directions. We use Rai Sport as a bargaining chip, you can give it to the left. But I repeat, the most treacherous is the League “. In fact, Northern League supporters use the San Pietro technique. The method is to deny, deny, so ask, ask. Marcello Ciannamea, Salvini’s shadow, says in Rai: “Leghista that? And since when? Never heard”. It’s tactics, rebound.

Grazia Graziadei, deputy director of Tg1, was a share of the League, but now the League says it is a share of FdI, but FdI recalls that it was a share of the League. For the Northern League, only the presenter Monica Setta, who is known to be a friend of the Captain, has the green dot, while Hoara Borselli, who also writes on Libero, and who went on stage with Salvini, “is now in the FdI share ”. Igor De Biasio, member of the Rai board of directors for the Carroccio, even distances himself from Elisa Isoardi, Salvini’s ex-girlfriend, who “it was not the League that wanted her again in Rai, but the left”. During a Salvini green lotion, “greener, greener”, we discover the new Northern League on the rise. “Madam, if you don’t deal with the environment and human rights on the right today, you have no future. The model is that of Claudia Conte who is so good at Isoradio, the Rai Po radio station”. FdI, with Angelo Mellone, the Angelo Guglielmi with the tight-fitting trousers, also has his best youth to exploit. The names are those of Greta Mauro, Bianca Luna Santoro and Carolina Rey. The Italian mole says: “They are targeting Mellone because he is the real thinking head of the new Rai. He invented the show “Top, everything is trendy”, and you know the joke that goes around: ‘It’s trendy, but you don’t listen, and down with laughter’. They’re leftist rascals, for sure. But what does it matter?

Now the right can count on Sergio, General Patton, on Rossi, the “Gp” commander, and there is also Minister Sangiuliano, Sanjust. It is thanks to his legislative activity that it was possible to break Fuortes’ backs. This means that Maria Antonietta Spadorcia, deputy director of Tg2, relay of Saintjust, can aspire to a direction, also because she has the double seal: Sangiuliano + Salvini = rise. Mole again. “But did you know that out of 2,000 journalists enrolled in Usigrai, 1,800 are from the Democratic Party, crashed by the Democratic Party?”. Then there are the young people, many without godparents, who really would like to rebuild Rai as it was after the war. “But do you think they’re finally promoting us? Will they give us space?”. They are the shy ones and in this party they blend into the crowd of Rai, open television. From afar, still the echo of the humiliated right-wing journalist: “That’s the sfonno, the sfonno.”

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• Carmelo Caruso

• Carmelo Caruso, journalist in Palermo, Milan, Rome. He started at La Repubblica. Today he works at the Foglio