All right, they tell me, you are a journalist: but what do you exactly do? My field is costume, I answer. Ah, costume: in other words, does that include everything?, they insist. Not really. At the beginning, for example, I had a specialisation, that was sport. Is that all?, they keep on asking. Well, in the hardship of the so-called career, of course, I also dealt with politics, maybe still and always fundamentally considered in its etymological sense, that is the life of the polis. And today I would like to write of all the implications of my work tied up together, beginning with a personal fact. Let's say I usually dislike those who pack articles with an irritating personalism, which usually and barrenly (for the reader) is meant to advertise themselves. Let's also say that in the jungle of reality and in that of ideas that in theory should both be a journalist's sphere of action, I think it is better when the writer manages to check personally, because his eyes and mind would then be tried.  
The difference lies in the usefulness or the absolute necessity of the personal reference which represents the basis of any considerations about correct relationships between advertising oneself (mentioning oneself) and information (report of the facts or ideas). Let me explain myself with an extreme example taken from the field of sport: now the relationship between product-sport and sponsor is or is considered “mature”, but there was a time when the situation lacked stability. I am talking of the 60s and 70s when, for example, names such as Simmenthal or Ignis sparkled in the basketball courts. It was evident that as they had “adopted” the teams, in this case Milan and Varese's, the sponsors automatically and unquestionably also gained the right and the duty to be mentioned. They were the “name of the news” every time there was a score, results, or a match. Thus mentioning oneself is or should be the answer to this principle of need in the system of the signs. Within this context, what is now happening to me is the equivalent to Simmenthal. But what is actually happening to me? In the last few days of October, I got a phone call from the editorial office of Sette, the daily Corriere della Sera's magazine and... but I don't want to bore you, so let me report a letter which I was forced to send to the Editor.  
Read the following: “The last issue of Sette reported an interview in which I was asked, along with '54 other important electors', to name the person who could have been the Freedom Alliance's new ideal candidate for Prime Minister, after Berlusconi's undertow. My words are reported correctly and precisely (my choice is Fini, to increase his political and cultural responsibility and thus to guarantee him, after the clearance identity card, also a passport for Europe, editor's note). But the long “distich” introducing this series of opinions reports that (and I had not been informed in advance) that “politicians, intellectuals and artists of the centre-right area were questioned”. It is not a problem of political line-up but of ways of labelling people: I would like to know what, in life, works and statements, makes somebody be placed in an area or another. My curiosity, not neutral but “chemically pure”, for instance, makes me wonder where two important Corriere's opinion-makers such as Galli della Loggia and Panebianco would be placed (and above all whether they must forcedly be on a particular side to meet some shelf need).  
Furthermore, why are not the “names” of the daily that cream off the indications of 55 rightists (Biagi, Franco, Merlo, Montanelli, Ostellino, Stella and Zincone) associated with their line-up in the above-mentioned report? I wish there were a discussion about it...”  
This was the letter I sent. Well, no discussion followed... I wonder why... I think this is the hard, the hardest part of a deep, very deep Italian restlessness.