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he made. Do you know what people discovered? The more he was caught making stupid mistakes, the more popular he became. People simply identified with this false “humanization.”
    Berlusconi is doing this masterfully. People don’t want a perfect leader, they want a leader with weaknesses like them, even with vulgarities. I read a nice analysis of Berlusconi: what it said is that he is just like an average Italian. He wants to screw around with women and he wants to cheat with taxes. They have a president who perfectly embodies or enacts the mythical image of the average Italian. People identify with him and he still remains popular. And yet, this appearance of his being “just an ordinary guy like the rest of us” should not deceive us.
    What I wanted to say through all of this is that something very important is changing – I don’t know how to formulate it – in the way that political leaders operate today. I claim that this old figure of a masterful leader with dignity is disappearing. Even Putin is very careful about this tendency. At some charity event, Putin played the piano and sang “Blueberry Hill.” I asked my friend, who is close to Putin, and he said that it is all planned, in the same way that he appears to lose his nerve and, from time to time, use dirty words. He knows this makes him popular. Something is changing here even with the features of the new model of political leader.

12
The Screen of Politeness/ Empty Gestures and Performatives
    How do you understand the general analysis of North Korea?
    SŽ: If you ask me about North Korea, I think it is interesting, as an extreme case, to ask how this regime functions; how it is possible. From what I read, one or two years ago North Korea changed its constitution, dropping out all references to socialism and communism. It is now some kind of patriotic military regime. Also what interests me is that even when Mao Zedong and Stalin were still in power and local media were praising them, North Korea never directly upheld the supernatural. At that time, it never claimed that Mao could create wonders, but now that is what is said in North Korea.
    For example, the official story of the death of Kim Il-Sung is that, when he died, thousands of ravens came down because people cried so much, so they decided not to take his soul away. It’s very interesting how the first communist regime directly transformed into supernatural dimensions. What intrigues me is a very simple question: do ordinary people in North Korea believe it or not? The answer might be relatively complex, because in a way they might not believe it, but, in another way, they cannot be simply cynical. There must be an interesting self-blinding confused mechanism.
    I wonder how much the floodgates will open. I read somewhere that they are now getting more cellphones and DVDs smuggled in from China. Will the regime survive with this? And if they want unification, what will happen if it takes place all of a sudden? My God, there are 20 million poor people. Are outsiders allowed to visit North Korea? I was told that you could go into North Korea via China, and in Beijing there are some agencies through which to do this. Recently I was told that the only way to visit there was either officially, as a diplomat or journalist, or you have to become a member of some North Korean Society of Friendship and play along with it for at least two years. I like this: even in the worst days of Stalinism, you were prohibited from talking with foreigners, and in North Korea I read that it’s even very dangerous for local people if you fix your gaze on them or if they have any kind of communication, even a non-verbal one too, with a foreigner.
    The problem is if North Korea collapses; we don’t want a repeat of the mistakes made in the case of East Germany. If you ask me, it might sound horribly somehow fascist or totalitarian, but I wouldn’t open the border immediately. What would happen if the North were to