(Newser)
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Maybe Silvio Berlusconi mistook Angela Merkel for a lady on the prowl instead of the leader of one of the globe's more stable economies: The cringe-inducing Italian PM's latest involves a phone conversation—with a newspaper editor, not a fraternity brother—in which he reportedly refers to the 57-year-old German chancellor as "an unfuckable fat ass." The phone call turned out to be taped, as these things so often are, and is now making the rounds as part of a blackmail investigation.
A Berlusconi-owned newspaper dismisses the reports as "gossip." Germany's Bild newspaper took the matter somewhat more seriously, yesterday running a headline that read: "Did Berlusconi insult our Chancellor Merkel?" It's not the first time Berlusconi has dissed his German counterpart, reports the Daily Mail. At a summit two years ago, Berlusconi let Merkel cool her heels while he chatted away on the cell phone, while the year before, he pounced on her from behind a statue as he shouted "peek a boo!"
