Harsh criticism of Virginia Raggi: she gave the culture department to her friend

Criticism is flowing in on Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi, and in particular on her choice forculture alderman. At the end of last week, the capital’s first citizen in fact dismissed the highly regarded councillor for culture Luca Bergamo, due to political differences (Bergamo in fact expressed disappointment about the hypothesis of Virginia Raggi’s re-election bid in the next elections, which will be held in a few months), and in his place appointed the very loyal Lorenza Fruci, who before becoming councillor for cultural growth was the mayor’s delegate for gender policies.

As reported by numerous sources, Lorenza Fruci, a Roman born in 1977, was a schoolmate of Mayoress Raggi’s on the desks of Liceo Scientifico Newton in Rome, but not only: the 43-year-old journalist is in fact a burlesque enthusiast, with two books on the subject to her credit(Betty Page. The Secret Life of the Pin-up Queen and Burlesque. When Entertainment Becomes Seduction. Stories, Divas and Legends of Yesterday and Today). And many have focused precisely on these features of the biography of the new councilwoman: passages that Fruci is among Virginia Raggi’s “loyalists,” but what appeared to many to be ill-timed was to have put a schoolmate in charge of culture, and what’s more, apparently a friend of hers, especially considering that the 5 Star Movement has always fought against the choices of “friends.”

Among the harshest is a journalist who hardly goes over the top, namely Corriere della Sera columnist Massimo Gramellini, according to whom Fruci “was not just any classmate (of those that, if you pass them on the street twenty years later, you change sidewalks), but a close friend of hers. Talk about luck. Nor should it shock that Rome’s new councillor for Culture, Lorenza Fruci, is not an expert in ancient history or Renaissance art but in burlesque, and has written a biography of the famous American pin-up Betty Page. If she had done it on Messalina it would have been better, but she still wrote a book, perhaps even read it, and that is enough to make her stand out in the cultural landscape, dense with depressions, of Italian politics.”

Gramellini specifies that he has no objection to Fruci’s appointment, but “only a doubt”: “If the mayor of any other party had entrusted Rome’s museums and monuments to a schoolmate competent in vintage stripping,” Gramellini concludingly wonders, “would Raggi’s sodalists have been just as tolerant, recognizing his good faith, or would they have shrieked at the scandal and alluded to cliques and familistic choices to favor friends of friends?”

Playing on sarcasm instead is Luigi Mascheroni of Il Giornale: “The new alderman’s resume is unassailable, compared to Five Star standards,” he wryly attacks. “If there is one emotional state that you cannot hold against Five Star politicians, it is embarrassment. They always feel they are up to the mark. However, the newly appointed councillor for Culture in Rome (a role in which even a Massimo Cacciari with the art-historical skills of a Salvatore Settis and the humanistic culture of Roberto Calasso would perceive a sense of inadequacy),” Mascheroni writes, “has immediately displaced the public and the national press. Prominent in her resume is a very noble passion for burlesque, which, in spite of the uninformed who until yesterday considered it a nice hobby, immediately appeared instead to be the milestone of an enviable cursus honorum that, given the way things are going in Italy, and the way the nomination was sold, could soon elevate Fruci to senatorial status.” Burlesque, Mascheroni still ironically continues, “something more than striptease, something less than cabaret, is the plastic representation of grillism. Neither sex nor eroticism, burlesque is like the politics of Di Maio&co. It wants transparency, but it doesn’t have the courage to lay itself completely bare. And in fact it is a theater.”

Numerous criticisms then come from various opposition politicians, but not only. One could close the review with journalist Michele Anselmi, who dedicates to Raggi and Fruci a quote from Kurt Vonnegut: “The real terror is waking up one morning and finding out that your high school classmates are running the country.”

Pictured: Lorenza Fruci

Harsh criticism of Virginia Raggi: she gave the culture department to her friend

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