The News
Hey, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!
An Italian politician serving in the European Parliament drank straight from a bottle of wine at 11 a.m. on Thursday, while speaking at a press conference to protest Ireland’s plan to add health warnings to wine bottles.
“I stick to the bottle,” Alessandra Mussolini said at the press conference, as people around her cheered ‘Brava!’
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Mussolini — the granddaughter of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini — spoke at the press conference to push back on Dublin’s proposal to put mandatory health warning labels on bottles of wine and other alcoholic drinks in Ireland.
The warnings would include information about the risks of cancer and liver disease linked to alcohol, as well as the risks of drinking while pregnant, The Guardian reported.
Mussolini held a piece up of paper detailing how the labels could hurt the economic health of wine-producing countries like Italy and Spain which have come out firmly against the plan.
Italy’s biggest farmers’ association Coldiretti said in a statement that it is “completely improper to equate the excessive consumption of spirits, typical of the Nordic countries, to the moderate and conscious consumption of quality products with lower alcohol content, such as beer and wine.”
Step Back
Mussolini is a member and former leader of Forza Italia, the center-right political party led by former Italian Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi.
She spoke Thursday at the wine tasting party she hosted at the European Parliament — from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
She has taken far-right stances on a number of policy issues, used Twitter to fiercely defend her grandfather, and fought to allow her children to take her last name.
Before getting into politics, she had a career as an actress (her aunt is Sophia Loren), a singer (she recorded a pop album that was only released in Japan), and model (she was on the cover of the Italian and German versions of Playboy).