Peak anger: Mountain plan makes Italians cross

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Do right-wing politicians employ people whose sole job is to hunt down anything that could be deemed potentially offensive and then immediately alert their boss so they can post an outraged tweet?

Let’s go with the answer “yes.” That would explain the furious response from Italian politicians this week when it was suggested that no more crosses should be placed atop mountain peaks.

It was reported that the Italian Alpine Club wanted to stop putting crosses on high peaks because they “are anachronistic, they don’t represent all climbers” and “peaks must be neutral territory.” If they had simply said “have you any idea how difficult it is to carry a massive cross up a mountain? They are really heavy,” then the response may have been more measured. But they didn’t, and it wasn’t.

Ten points if you guessed that Matteo Salvini was furious. “You will have to pass over my body to remove a single crucifix from an Alpine peak,” he raged, without specifying if he was actually planning to lie down in the snow at the top of Gran Paradiso.

The Italian Alpine Club later rowed back, with its boss saying “we have never dealt with the topic of summit crosses anywhere, much less taking an official position,” and blaming another member of staff for going rogue.

At the time of writing, Salvini hasn’t weighed in on the other big Italian news of the week, a 2,000-year-old fresco depicting what looks like pizza being found in the ruins of Pompeii.

Experts reckon that the flatbread on the fresco — which has assorted toppings, although mozzarella cheese or tomato weren’t available back then — could be a “distant relative” of modern-day pizza. The other big clue could be a petrified Domino’s driver holding a receipt.

If it was pizza, then Brazil’s president wouldn’t eat it.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has criticized the quality and size of the portions he was served on recent visits to Rome and Paris.

“I had lunch with Macron and with President Mattarella. Two palace meals, which are not that great,” said the Brazilian president in an interview on his YouTube channel. The leftist leader said he doesn’t enjoy food at official state dinners because “everything is tiny and restricted.”

Lula will be visiting Brussels soon. For goodness sakes, no one serve him Anguilles au vert.

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Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.