Bloggers disapproved? What a shock.
It wasn't a PR disaster or a triumph. I know it's hard for the guilters to believe, but there actually is a large number of people in the world whose first reaction to everything is not a value judgment. If I had seen those pictures on my own without the help of the various editorial comments, I wouldn't have thought twice about them.
As for Americans making Amanda's situation worse, well, as I said before, it is very hard to overcome one's cultural upbringing. Basically, you are suggesting that Amanda's supporters toe the line and behave deferentially toward people we perceive as extremely immature and unethical. To do so would involve playing a complex game, the rules of which we would constantly have to be tutored in and reminded of.
We would have to keep in mind that we are never allowed to criticize the prosecutors, police or investigators. As you wrote, "Let's take the matter of Amanda supposedly being hit during questioning. Her lawyers went to great pains to state to the press that they never said she was hit." I have a feeling the prison doctors, psychologists, chaplains, guards and so on who have crossed paths with Amanda and Raffaele in prison have gone to similar great pains not to betray their feelings about the two defendants, lest they face slander suits themselves.
Even if such an elaborate game -- a strategy, if you will -- were possible, and everybody on Amanda's team was willing to pull it off, we know there is still no guarantee that Mignini and his pals would respond predictably. It very easily could get to a point where he stops feeling threatened and starts feeling respected, but then he goes ahead and acts arbitrarily and capriciously anyway.
Michael Heavey approached the Italian Court very respectfully -- where did it get him?
The fact that Italy is only a generation or two removed from a Fascist regime should not require that we have to goose-step in order to communicate with them.
