If the success of a TV pundit with a red rubber nose is a rebuke to the dull and fawning anchormen, the political success in recent years of entertainers, demagogues, and public figures who make a virtue of their indiscretion is a slap in the face of the professional political class which they profess to despise. The recent re-election of the great showman Silvio Berlusconi illustrates this perfectly.