This is an unrealistic argumentation, usually deployed to paint contemporaries in a bad light by comparing them to "saints" who are, conveniently, always dead. And it's particularly funny that Borsellino is now in the "saints" category, when he was explicitly namechecked by Sciascia himself in the newspaper column that originated the term "anti-mafia professional". Falcone also got extremely close to becoming the national anti-mafia czar, because his career had been defined by that very subject. Both were killed precisely because they specialised in this area and refused to move elsewhere.
Sciascia was 67 when he wrote that column, and was likely just aggrieved by the fact that national response to the mafia was escalating to levels before unseen (for a number of reasons). He might have had a point about another name-checked personality, the politician Leoluca Orlando, who survived those terrible times and ended up ruling Palermo for more than 20 years - something a lot of people see as realistically incompatible with actually being the anti-mafia hardliner he is supposed to be.
Saviano, however, is just a specialized journalist.
> And it's particularly funny that Borsellino is now in the "saints" category, when he was explicitly namechecked by Sciascia himself in the newspaper column that originated the term "anti-mafia professional".
If you read the original article from Sciascia [1], you can understand that he was complaining about the risk of judge appointments drived by anti-mafia positions, more than competence.
> Saviano, however, is just a specialized journalist.
If Saviano is only a specialized journalist, why is invited in many public talk-show where the topic is different from Mafia?
Because that's just how media works. It's like asking why sportsmen and scientists are invited to Big Brother VIP.
> ou can understand that he was complaining about the risk of judge appointments drived by anti-mafia positions
But if you read it all, you can clearly see that he was mostly pissed off at the risk of identifying the entirety of his beloved Sicily with the mafia; and in this context, that everything about the island would be judged in relation to that phenomenon. In addition, he was worried at the fact that many in the ruling political party had started using antimafia as a shield; that's a veiled reference to Giulio Andreotti, who around that time shifted his positions and passed antimafia laws to shore up his support in the party (which is why the mafia moved their votes to the Socialist Party in '87).
People obviously misread that column (willingly or otherwise) and proceeded to use it as a bat to beat any specialized anti-mafia figure, starting from the very person mentioned in it, Borsellino, who would end up isolated and assassinated by the mafiosi.
Sciascia was 67 when he wrote that column, and was likely just aggrieved by the fact that national response to the mafia was escalating to levels before unseen (for a number of reasons). He might have had a point about another name-checked personality, the politician Leoluca Orlando, who survived those terrible times and ended up ruling Palermo for more than 20 years - something a lot of people see as realistically incompatible with actually being the anti-mafia hardliner he is supposed to be.
Saviano, however, is just a specialized journalist.