Federico Palmaroli and Giorgia Meloni
Federico Palmaroli, alias “Osho”: an explosive success. His friendship with Giorgia Meloni
Federico Palmaroli, aka “Osho”, is a Roman from Monteverde who is having explosive success. Raise your hand if you have never received some of his cartoons on WhatsApp. He started a few years ago by combining Romansh phrases with the image of an Indian holy manOsho Rajneesh.
The mechanism of comedy was to combine the sacred and very serious image with the banality of everyday life. It all began in 2015 when Palmaroli accidentally found a group of Osho followers on Facebook. The holy man has a rapt, enraptured gaze, lost in infinity. He is looking at a map, he meditates. The bum modulated by the wind, the bushy eyebrows like those of Brezhnev and Moravia, put together.
And then the flash of genius which is imagination, intuition, glance and speed of execution. Palmaroli takes the photo and writes below: “Tomatoes taste like no more than a ca…o”. The favor of the public is immediate. A mountain of “likes” and laughter to no end. In a recent interview with Corriere della Sera, he provides other concrete examples: a man and a woman are walking in via Condotti in Rome, at Christmas… He: “Your brother-in-law has to do a shit too”. Or, recently, I found a photo of Eva Kaili sitting in a small parlor with two emirs. The cartoon is that one asks her “and if they ask you if it’s hot, what do you have to answer?” and she: “It’s hot, but it’s dry heat”.
In short, the mechanism of comedy is fueled by the made and trivial phrases that we hear every day, however, transposed into a serious situation. But why doesn’t Osho appear anymore in his cartoons? The reason, intuitive, is soon said: because the world association headed by the late holy man, in fact, Osho, is mystical but has its feet firmly planted on the ground and therefore in Palmaroli, to a certain, he received a nice letter from a legal office in New York, not from Laurentino 38, who warned him not to use the image of the bearded Indian anymore, on pain of complete stripping of material goods and a bad karma of the aforementioned Palmaroli who had to be recycled towards other images and this, among other things, was fortunate because he was the doors of political satire are open.
Thus “Osho-Palmaroli” targeted the human material that the wonderful planet of politics makes available every day, let’s even say every minute. So he was able to try his hand at well-tested pairs, such as Conte – Casalino, or with Di Maio – Tabacci, Speranza, la Raggi and so on and so forth. But Osho, as everyone now calls him, does not stop at national politics. And so this pearl came out some time ago: “There is a photo of Volodymyr Zelensky who says to him“ Totti and Ilary are staying apart and we are going to make a tragedy for ‘na guera ‘. Or there is Sergio Mattarella on the stage of Sanremo saying “che due co..oni … But nun je I could manna pur’io ‘na letter?”.
Politically Osho is right-wing and is a close friend of Giorgia Meloni whom he has known since 2016. But when they see each other they don’t talk about politics but only dinners where they break out with laughter. After all, Meloni has a strong sense of irony and comedy and jokes, when she was “little” she made many. A favorite place were the meetings of Atreju in which the great politicians percolated. Illustrious victims. Noble fathers of parties and movements.
For example they asked Fini for support on a non-existent Asian population, that of the Kaziri who was oppressed because they were a minority in Turkmenistan. Meloni says: “Immediately afterwards a completely bald figure with a long red beard gets up, who with folded hands begins to invoke help in a petulant tone: ‘A lot of help president, Kaziri help’. Fini impassive he crosses his legs and replies: “I know the situation, the discrimination…”. General laughter.
Meloni reminded Berlusconi of the brutality of the non-existent dictator of Laos, Pai Mei (name taken from Kill Bill wonderful film by Quentin Tarantino). It was the period in which the Knight turned the “black book of communism” with his arm in arm. The only one, he recounts in his autobiography, “Io sono Giorgia” (Rizzoli), who was disappointed and replied piqued was “Uolter” Veltroni to whom in 2007 – when he was mayor of Rome – he asked for an account of the non-existent “borgata Pinarelli”.
Seriously, he nods and begins, as if nothing had happened, to rattle off the interventions made in this periphery until Meloni says to him: “Walter stop…there is no Pinarelli village in Rome”. In fact it is a name taken from the film by Bruno Corbucci Crime in Formula One, with Tomas Milian as Inspector Nico Giraldi. The mayor was bruised and said: “Ah if we want to play these little games… I think I know Rome very well!”. And in fact. Let’s hope that Osho also makes some cartoons on past politicians, that the material, as seen, is excellent and plentiful.
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