Massimo Gramellini lashes out at Federica Pellegrini and Matteo Giunta

Massimo Gramellini in Corriere della Sera had his say after the’episode that made the rounds on social media starting right from Instagram and that involved Federica Pellegrini and her husband as well as former coach Matteo Giunta: “Will there still be a difference between calling someone a piece of shit in private and writing it on Instagram, or not? I answer myself: no. I was thinking about it while reading the post of two smart people who are used to handling stress, Federica Pellegrini and her former coach and current husband Matteo Giunta”.

“Their little girl caught the flu at the daycare center, and a text appeared on Giunta’s profile, enthusiastically shared by his wife, which reads as follows: “I am addressing those parents who send their feverish children to daycare. You are irresponsible pieces of shit!”. There was a time when they would have stopped at irresponsible. The final insult they would have thought of, perhaps uttered at a dinner with friends. But never would they have dreamed of shouting it or writing it in public, making it available to an undistinguished audience and exposing those parents, guilty of mindlessness, to the pillory”.

“The veil that separated the thinkable from the sayable, and the sayable from the writable – has crumbled, added Gramellini.

The boorish phrase, which some dinosaur survivors of the meteorite of bad taste insist on considering a shortcut and a symptom of weakness, has become a sign of vitality and sincerity. Not only those who write and speak, but also those who read and listen can now grasp a concept only when it is peppered with an insult”.

“To have any chance of going down in history, today Martin Luther King would have to say “I have a fucking dream!” and maybe that would not be enough, if he did not accompany it with a gesture”, concluded Gramellini in his famous column in Corriere della Sera.