WHAT BEPPE GRILLO WANTS

Some time ago, I spent a week with Grillo while reporting a Profile for The New Yorker—snooping around his home near Genoa, talking with him backstage after shows and rallies, travelling with him in Lombardy and Sardinia. What I saw makes me think that Peer Steinbrück and other politicians, abroad and in Italy, along with much of the press, has him wrong.

True, Grillo is a funny fellow, but in person he’s also pensive, inquisitive, and a tad professorial; his library is filled with underlined, dog-eared tomes on economics, renewable energy, and healthcare, and he frequently sounds out ideas with their authors, members of a Nobel-studded brain trust that includes Joseph Stiglitz, Muhammad Yunus, Lester Brown, and Dario Fo. Grillo ignores other politicians and the press, and broadcasts his messages through alternative channels: comedy shows, city-council meetings, demonstrations, and MeetUp gatherings across Italy, and via his Web site, which is run by the Internet guru Gianroberto Casaleggio but displays Grillo’s blend of irreverence, optimism, and fruitful obscenity

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