Friday, January 20

Concordia's Deep Throat

The tragedy of the Concordia has been rocking the airwaves and bandwiths for days now, each day bringing out new revelations.  But for every bit of news that goes reported, it seems that it gives rise to even more questions. So true also in the case of the mystery Moldavian who was hunkering down in Moldavia after jumping ship and skedaddling as fast as her dancer's legs could take her.  But the most pressing question, in the first days of the tragedy was...How could this have happened?!  We've been met with a captain's smorgasbord of explanations ever since.
A friend who was holed up at Rome Airport’s Hilton Hotel with many of the crew members all last weekend simply asked them the next obvious question:   “So what was really going on there?”  Little did she know before it broke at the UK's Telegraph that the word on the street was that our wonder-boy was most likely banging a “Russian whore” on the bridge before banging his boat into the hard rock basin below the Island of Giglio.  That's not true.  Turns out, she's Moldavian.  A former "dancer" for Costa lines.  Perhaps in the way Berlusconi's Egyptian princess, Ruby Rubacuore (Heartstealer) is also a dancer?   
I, for one, do not believe the Italian macho press when it states it was she who "egged him on" to go closer & closer to the shore -- in the land of the Papacy, ahhh...don't we love a modern-day Eve?   After all, the videotapes of the bridge have yet to be released.  It would make much more sense that he was trying to impress her by taking his boat so close to the island.
In fact, as he approached, he jokingly asked the Commodore (by phone, and the man Schettino had purportedly wanted to salute), "Got water?"  Talk about famous last words.  Can't wait to see that on a t-shirt.
From the get-go, no one has believed Captain Schettino’s version of events.  Especially his last alibi, "I tripped and fell into a life boat".  Hundreds trying to get into those boats didn't make it in...He goes onto say he was stuck in his little dinghy - not able to jimmy the boat down into the water...So much for his mariner's skills at that.
But doesn't that make a convenient excuse for explaining your absence?  It'll go down in the annals of history alongside "The dog ate my homework."
I'm going with my version instead:  Perhaps he had jettisoned off the boat to make sure his “lady friend” would be on land before being found out -- a Poseidon Adventure version of having your wife come home while you’re in bed with your lover, so you shimmy her out the window to make a clean escape.
He also supposedly called a taxi, but never took one (reports vary).  Perhaps the taxi driver can shed a bit more light onto who his passenger was?  It would explain his absence and his presence on a lifeboat when people were anxiously trying to jump ship from the prow.
Nonetheless, the audacity of Schettino's admission makes the entire disaster even more senseless.  It also certainly explains the stunned reaction of our Captain once he was caught knee deep in it – and with his pants down.  
Schettino, for his part, was only following in the example of our former Prime Minister who had come to love the brazen mixture of power, money, whores, spectacle and thumbing your nose at the rules.  In fact, both men started out in life on cruise ships. It comes as no surprise at least to this observer that, at first accosted by the Coast Guard Commander and later upon arrest, our Captain Coward denied everything just like Silvio -- right down even to the existence of the rocks that has torn more than his boat apart.

2 comments:

Travel and Taste said...

thank you for this post, so well written and so true. It is like Amanda Knox all over again.

Irreverent Italy said...

Here's an update for you: As of 25 Jan 2012, the Captain now admits to taking a lifeboat...he still hasn't coughed up the purpose...
A better excuse would have been "to assess the damage" but even that didn't cross his clearly befuddled mind...
Each day, we're getting closer to the truth.