《辛普森一家》嘲弄意大利爲腐敗典型

Italianshave reacted with a mixture of indignation and self-criticism after an episode of The Simpsons mocked the country as a den of corruption.

A cheating scandal at Bart and Lisa Simpson's school leads Kent Brockman, the newsreader character in the long-running cartoon, to describe it as "more corrupt than the Italian parliament."

He shows the principal of the school, Seymour Skinner, undercover footage of students cheating at their exams.

"If these children are our future then I for one do not want to live," the news anchor says in the episode, which was broadcast in the United States this week.

The episode sparked a debate among Italians on social media, with some seeing the funny side but others expressing disgust that the venality of politicians had led to Italy being held up as a synonym for corruption.

"We've really hit rock bottom," said one Twitter user.

"It's official – we are now the laughing stock of even the Simpsons," tweeted another.

"If even the Simpsons are taking the mickey, isn't it time to start asking ourselves a few questions?" wrote an Italian woman.

Others were more defiant, saying the United States had more than enough graft of its own.

"This comes from the country that has the largest number of banking scandals in the world," said one Twitter user.

Italy was ranked 72 out of 174 states and territories in Transparency International's most recent Corruption Perceptions Index, which lists countries based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.

The least corrupt countries, jointly at number one, were Finland, New Zealand and Denmark, while the most graft-ridden was Somalia.

Silvio Berlusconi, the three-times prime minister, has faced a wide range of corruption allegations during his 20 years in politics, from tax fraud on a massive scale to abusing his office by having an under age prostitute released from police custody and bribing a Left-wing senator three million euros to join his centre-Right party.《辛普森一家》新劇集嘲笑意大利是“腐敗窩”，意大利人心情複雜，既感到憤怒，又不得不進行自我批評。

在《辛普森一家》新劇集中，巴特和麗薩·辛普森的學校爆發作弊醜聞，動畫片裏的新聞播報員肯特·布羅克曼稱“這比意大利國會更腐敗”。

他指出，學校校長西摩·斯金納默許學生在考試中作弊。

“如果這些孩子是我們的未來，那我寧願不活了。”動畫片中的新聞主播這樣說道。這集動畫片於本週在美國播出。

這集動畫片在意大利社交媒體上引發了爭論。許多人認爲它很搞笑，但另外一些人感到反感，政治家們的貪贓枉法讓意大利成爲腐敗國家代名詞。

一名推特用戶寫道：“我們真的觸底了。”

另一名用戶寫道：“因爲意大利官員，我們現在成了《辛普森一家》的笑料。”

一名意大利女子寫道：“即便《辛普森一家》拿我們開玩笑，難道我們不應該開始反思一些問題嗎？”

還有人對此感到憤怒，稱美國腐敗現象更嚴重。

一名推特用戶寫道：“這些嘲弄來自擁有世界上銀行腐敗醜聞最多的國家。”

據瞭解，在“透明國際”公佈的全球清廉指數報告中，意大利在174個國家和地區中排名第72位。

並列排行第一的全球最清廉國家是芬蘭、新西蘭和丹麥，排行末尾的則是索馬里。

曾三次當選意大利總理的貝盧斯科尼在其20年政治生涯中，面臨許多腐敗指控，包括大規模稅務欺詐、濫用職權（保釋了一名被拘留的未成年妓女）、用300萬歐元賄賂左翼參議員讓其參與他的中右政黨等。