Opinion: You can put lipstick on a pig, but should you bring one to Ground Zero? « » Print The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Opinion: You can put lipstick on a pig, but should you bring one to Ground Zero? « » Print The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "One of the many benefits of being Italian is that colorful stories from the “old country” trickle over to the states from time to time through relatives, friends and helpful paesani.

My uncle recently regaled me with just such a yarn, told to him by some Italian business associates he sees regularly. The setting is picturesque Padua, nestled in the Veneto region of northern Italy, on the Bacchiglione River. Those of you who like to read fancy books know that Padua is also the setting for Shakespeare’s comedy “The Taming of the Shrew.” And it’s no coincidence — my uncle’s story sounds like just the kind of tale the Bard would have written if he’d lived long enough. It goes something like this:

A group of Muslims wanted to build a mosque. They got all the permits and permissions they needed, but the Padovani townsfolk wanted no part of it. After months of arguing over religious freedoms and land rights, a crafty Catholic stole away in the dead of night, and paraded a well-trained pig around the site, who sprayed its urine as it ambled over the rocks and leveled gravel. Upon hearing of the curious midnight shower, the Muslims behind the mosque threw up their hands and said, “This ground is forever unclean,” and they packed up and moved on to another unsuspecting village, where the pigs had not yet heard of them.

Okay, so maybe it’s more Chaucer than Shakespeare, but you get the gist. Needless to say, I was skeptical, as was my uncle, but we both agreed it was a delightfully quaint way to solve a problem. I decided to look into it.

Turns out, there’s more truth there than mere farm animal fiction, and hardly something out of medieval times. In 2007, a woman named Mariella Mazzetto did indeed parade a pig on the site of a planned mosque in Padua. But she wasn’t just some local loony. She was the former Italian deputy Education Minister under Silvio Berlusconi, and member of the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, 10 other members of which joined in her pig protest.