Agylen

Can you see any similarity between the guy pictured here and the one in the first frame of this strip?

Well, if there is any physical similarity, it is purely coincidental, because the guy on the left is Cosimo Mele, a member of the Italian Parliament elected with a Catholic party (UDC), whereas the vignette on the right represents a “sanctimonious, moralizing Republican”.

The coincidence, however, is stunning: on the same day the strip was published, it was revealed that Mele—with all probability a sanctimonious, moralizing Catholic but definitely married with children and a member of a political party that defends “traditional family values”— had spent last Friday night in a Rome hotel with “a lady, or maybe two, who was later admitted to a hospital with problems apparently due to cocaine and alcohol abuse”.

Now, a lady or maybe two is not the same as a lady, a clown, a lift boy and a giraffe, but the similarity is striking.

You can read more about this story here. The (as usual) hilarious Google translation is here (don’t be fooled by the reference to “Apples”, it’s just that “mele” in Italian means “apples”, as in the fruit).