So historic as to become the eponym of an era: that of private TV, of entrepreneurship that explicitly descends into politics, instead of piloting it from behind the scenes, of money as an existential unit of measurement, of pleasure-loving and a little vulgar life.
In fact, it is undeniable that he embodied vices and virtues, not so much Italian as Lombard: faith in work and tenacity, but also an unpleasant “cumenda” air, who enters a museum and asks: “Sa custa? ”.
However, it would be simplistic and a little pilates-like to reduce the figure of Berlusconi to a caricature or an oleograph: the merits and defects of the character certainly rise to an almost metaphorical dignity, but the patron of Mediaset was also and above all another .
First of all, he was a great innovator, which rightfully delivers him to our pages.
To begin with, today, when television has become a very different phenomenon from what it was forty years ago, it seems difficult to imagine what Berlusconi's ride meant at the dawn of the new television era: what we take for granted, then, it wasn't at all.

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Going from the brick to the cathode ray tube was by no means a foregone conclusion

Going from brick to cathode ray tube was by no means a foregone conclusion: Berlusconi had a vision and this vision was a future that has become our present.
Just as Goebbels had understood the formidable power of the radio, the Arcore tychoon saw the gigantic potential of television: and, like Goebbels, he understood its titanic persuasive force.
Was it good? Was it bad?
Probably, it was a bit of one and a bit of the other: it opened two eyes to the world to the masses and, at the same time, it gave a powerful push to traditional culture and, to some extent, to the degree of civilization of the Italians, who, too, had come out of illiteracy also thanks to Alberto Manzi's TV.

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Political club, in antithesis to the sections of the PCI, as the Jacobins ventured

But Silvio Berlusconi, as an innovator, didn't stop there: his political vision too, with the creation, in an anti-communist key, of a party-company, based on clubs and not on sections, represented a novelty, although the idea of the clubs had already come to the Jacobins more than two centuries ago.
In that party, he infused his personality and dynamism: Forza Italy it represented a multiple accumulation, but also a new way, after the ideological and moral catastrophe of Tangentopoli.
His vision, then, was extraordinarily far-sighted: he understood that the left, thanks to its granite structure, would not have suffered the tsunami of Mani Pulite and realized, with exceptional promptness, that countermeasures had to be immediately created to avoid its spread .
Thus, he announced his descent into the field to the Italians, with all the trappings of an American-style communication, which has become normal today, but which was not then.
Not everyone in Mediaset took it well and it must be said that Berlusconi, at the time, respected the positions of all his collaborators, even when they appeared antipodic to his own, as in the case of Gori or Mentana.

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The paternalistic and paternal entrepreneur, the charismatic and shrewd project manager

In this and in much more, he simultaneously embodied the figure of the paternalistic and paternal entrepreneur and that of the charismatic and shrewd project manager.
Then, there are those who say that the 1994 move was due to the danger of his companies, but, in Italy we are so used to conspiracy, real or presumed, that, without supporting documents, we leave Travaglio and those like him the incandescent elzeviri.
Extraordinary fringe benefits which sometimes went beyond the bounds of the lawful or, at least, the opportune and an unscrupulous love for beautiful women and for atmospheres, so to speak, not exactly moderate, made Berlusconi the idol of a certain type of Italian, which pre-existed him, but which he certainly cleared and glorified.
But this is the history of costume: a history which, by its very nature, soon evaporates.

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A myth stronger than history itself, like the Chanson de Roland for Roncesvalles

Where, on the other hand, the trace of Berlusconi's passage on this earth will remain for a long time is the imaginary: Berlusconi's mythology, stronger than history itself, exactly like the Chanson de Roland, far goes beyond the historical importance of the Roncesvalles episode .
And, in the imagination, Berlusconi is homo novus: the extraordinarily successful upstart and, at the same time, an exceptional inventor, a constant creator of novelties. The Brianza myth of the self-made man.
Thus, in one way or another, be glory to Berlusconi, a man of novelty and invention, of perseverance and self-confidence.
However things go, a giant compared to the legions of dwarves plaguing Italy. He certainly had faults and defects, but not for that he will remain in history.
Therefore, let's drop both the "servant praise" and the "cowardly outrage", which always follow the departure of a famous and, perhaps, illustrious person.
Let us rather look at the ability to anticipate of the politician and the entrepreneur, which made him an extraordinary innovator.

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