“But even the most permissive American audience might be unsettled by the vision of female sexuality that Berlusconi has communicated through his television monopoly over the years. On “Colpo Grosso,” a game show that aired in the late eighties and early nineties, contestants had to strip if they got an answer wrong, and the inevitable conclusion was a showcase of topless women, blushing and trying to cover themselves with their hands. (The show also featured the Cin Cin girls, notoriously unskilled dancers in skimpy costumes and high heels, singing tunelessly, their faces blank.) “Buona Domenica,” which is on the air now, features young women in tight dresses being prodded into a clear shower stall to get soaked in front of a live audience. On one episode, the host explains to a guest, “I’m not doing it for me, I’m doing it for all Italian men—you get the shower.” On most episodes of “Libero,” a woman is trapped under a Perspex table, like a caged animal. If your only information about female people came from Berlusconi’s channels, you would likely conclude that they exist specifically to be sexually humiliated in public. On “Scherzi a Parte,” a woman in her underpants hangs from a meat hook alongside hundreds of hams as a man in a butcher’s costume stamps a sell-by date on her behind.”