Everywhere you turn in Italy you come face to face with a sacred cow. Should you dare to want to turn it into steaks, try to move it from your path or you simply state that this is a sacred cow, perhaps even a skinny one, then the custodians of the sacred cow will immediately step in. The cow, because it is indeed a cow that we are dealing with, is often unaware of all the fuss and continues to do precisely what cows do, namely browse on the grass and parade around the media that invite it to express its hard lowing. Still renowned is the cult of the Veltroni cow at Lingotto in Turin. For many months this cow was adored by the newspapers, just like the golden calf was adored by the Jewish people (who then proceeded to get rid of it). Topo Gigio, instead, continues to infest the management of the has-been little pdwithoutanel party with his daily gems. The cow that was to succeed Agnelli, the Attorney’s ruminant heir, was protected for years by the entire constitutional spectrum, from Fassino through to Bertinotti and from “La Repubblica” through to the “Corriere della Sera”. This was a voracious cow, hungry for dividends: the tronchetto of unhappiness, the quadriped (or quadrumane?) who has for some time now been spending his days in the Milan Courts claiming that he was a President of the company but was unaware of what his people were getting up to. A cow that was not of sound mind. Sacred cows can be identified by the number of front-page quotes, presences on talk shows and their moral superiority. As regards the fallen sacred cows, as happens to almost all of them sooner or later, are never butchered, but recycled in moderation. They are approached for an opinion, to sit on the board of some or other bank, or for a Sunday interview. Sacred cows are always "politically correct": humanitarian, anti-racist, progressive and non-violent. One sacred cow leads to another, writers, journalists, politicians, their media consumption is endless. Sacred cows are free to plunder the henhouses and eat all of the chickens. Since they are sacred and since they are cows (if they were foxes it would be entirely another matter) no one can shoot them. Sacred cows have their own personal protectors, like the god Krishna in India. In Italia, instead of protectors in the true sense of the word, the sacred cows have wretched pimps that create myths in order to distract the citizens while they run off with the loot. Who are the current sacred cows? I can’t say, but I can only think who they may be. Let he who is not afraid of the sacred cows cast the first stone (against them).