A "turquoise Revolution" in Italy?

The world has seen a red revolution, a green revolution and an orange revolution, but Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may have sparked a turquoise revolution.

Italian judge Raimondo Mesiano ruled that Silvio Berlusconi's company Fininvest was liable in a bribery case and ordered it to pay over a billion dollars in lost revenue to rival company the CIR Group. Within days of this ruling, Berlusconi's television station Canale 5 began secretly taping the judge.  The footage aired and commentators called Mesiano extravagant and eccentric. They focused on the number of cigarettes he smoked and his turquoise socks. The commentators called his choice in socks, "strange."

This in turn inspired Democratic Party Leader Dario Franceschini to call on all Italians to start wearing turquoise socks to show solidarity with the judge. He said, "Mesiano was simply guilty of doing his job as a judge."

Naturally, judges in Italy are furious about the privacy, but surprisingly, even Berlusconi's political allies and employees of his Mediaset find the act disgraceful and pathetic.

However Mediaset's head of news lashed out at critics justifying the footage as objective and necessary given Mesiano's rise to prominence in Italy. He also said, "We don't accept lectures from those who have routinely used spying as a journalistic method." That statement was in reference to those outlets that reported on Berlusconi's multiple sex scandals.

The sure-to-be prominence of turquoise-socked protesters in Italy will only further add to the woes of the most persecuted man in history.  

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