> used to hear the same sort of thing about Bologna.
> One of my buddies in college was an Italian from
> Newark whose father was a cop. You can imagine
> the latter's politics. Their relatives in Italy
> were all communists. On a visit to the U.S.,
> some of them had an interesting conversation
> with Daddio. My friend asked him what he
> concluded and Dad said different strokes
> for different folks, but the main thing the
> CP had going for it in Italy was simply that
> all the other parties were perceived as
> corrupt.
My comrades in Italy were always members of the various extra-parliamentary New Left and autonomist organizations. However, on one trip there with a former spouse, her non-political relatives insisted on giving us a tour. As we passed billboards, one of them said, "That one is for our Communist Party, which is like your Democratic Party, and that one is for our Christian Party, which is like your Republican Party."
Ken Lawrence