Drowning in Tolerance

Just to digress from the formerly established pattern, I am making a break from comment on printed media to pass a brief comment on a recent Internet-based initiative undertaken by blog enthusiast Jacques René Zammit.

****************

Earlier this month, the lamppost movement published its manifesto. As the document explains in introduction, the lamppost serves to be a platform as well an umbrella, an odd sequence of images that conveys more a rainy train station on a Tuesday evening than a progressive organisation.
The blog calls for comments, which I have decided to offer here in some greater length than I would prefer to volunteer on the forum provided. As the overly rich combination of images and intentions of the manifesto alluded to earlier suggests, some of the core issues of discussion may be fundamentally linguistic in nature. Some time back, I encouraged Sharon at Lost in Thought to throw out a few provocative questions on her blog in an attempt to incite some discussion, and hence understanding, of the themes underlying the decidedly medieval fashion for door-burning and racially intolerant rhetoric taking hold in Malta. Ultimately, the discussion proved unfulfilling and was relatively unsubscribed to, which is a shame, because explanations should ideally be sought to social problems before setting forth into nominally noble and grandiloquent affirmations of love and respect for one's fellow man. Consequently, amidst the austere legalistic framework of the manifesto, which looks like it owes more than something to formative mini-European assemblies, the author(s) speak of how they are:

"Alarmed by the current rise in acts of intolerance, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, racism, exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination directed against national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, refugees, migrant workers, immigrants and vulnerable groups within societies, as well as acts of violence and intimidation committed against individuals exercising their freedom of opinion and expression – all of which threaten the consolidation of peace and democracy, both nationally and internationally, and are obstacles to development."

The very notion of tolerance is then used as the defining issue for the first article of the manifesto. However, as Zadie Smith recently noted in an interview of Radio Tre (available here, listen from 5:09 for the relevant remarks), tolerance is a concept that cuts in both directions. As Smith correctly observes, tolerance is the sensation one feels when someone on the train plays their stereo too loud. It's irritating, but you can put up with it.
As a concept, tolerance has several centuries of vintage to it and is not the enlightenment novelty that we might immediately assume it is. Mindful of the fact that this is beginning to sound like a column in the Sunday Times, it should be recalled that as early as the 13th century, Pope Innocent IV observed that it was not desirable for natural law as understood by ecclesiastical authority to be imposed upon the non-believer. From this, there derived two basic propositions - first, that which is tolerated is synonymous with evil; second, the application of tolerance serves merely to pre-empt the prevailing of a worse evil.
These remain the basic principles that define, if not inspire, tolerance on a popular level. As I attempted, not very clearly, to argue in e-mails to Sharon Spiteri, tolerance understood as the act of "putting up with" represents a far more ominous and real threat than the likes of Malta's budding far-right.

The Maltese have, after all, with their centuries of Catholic piety become experts at the art of making the right noises about loving one's neighbour while stabbing them in the back and gossiping about them at every available opportunity. This means that the effort to browbeat people into saying the right things about the minorities may be the easiest part of the challenge that the lamppost initiative is taking upon itself.

To get real about this, though, it is unlikely that Malta could ever feasibly support what could truly be identified as an actual minority. In this sense, the commendable effort of the lamppost movement/platform/umbrella should perhaps address the not only the roots of racial disharmony but also the benefits for a mature society that has evolved enough to see past the primitive conception of race relations as they currently stand. After all, the embrace of diversity is not an aspirational value in itself, but a means to a culturally sophisticated society. Arguably, Malta’s relative failure to produce a genuinely exportable and compelling cultural product to reflect its modern self is a product of the insularity that has provided fuel to the “current rise in acts of intolerance” cited by the lamppost manifesto. Before descending into serious rambling, I will leave this observation here for now. However, I would like to state that although I certainly sympathise with the goals envisaged by this project, there is some reason to feel that its constituent principles have erroneously superseded the process of understanding that such an exercise entails. I have no sense that this has really taken place.

God Save the Queen

It is hard to tell when Kenneth Zammit Tabona writes about the Queen whether he is referring to himself or to the sovereign ruler of the United Kingdom, or Queen Bess as he chummily refers to her. As testament to his fairy-footed effeteness, the opening paragraph of his latest column is nothing but a sequence of prosaic affectations worthy of I.M. Beck at his very worst:

"To most of these 'gels' with more money than sense, the intricacies of equine bloodlines and speeds per furlong are a cabbalistic mystery; not so to Her Majesty, who, while her troops suffer needlessly in war-torn Iraq, is content to leave King Tony in charge doing the real work and getting all the flak for it too. The Queen may know all there is worth knowing about quadrupeds but where survival is concerned she is certainly no fool; she also has no hang-ups and insecurities as far as original millinery is concerned!"

What all this literary mincing all means is quite beyond me, though I am fairly confident Zammit Tabona is attempting, with embarrassing amateurishness, to satirise the mores of the British upper class while simultaneously working in some acerbic political commentary. While I have absolutely no interest in dwelling upon the merits of the Queen's constitutional authority, I am worried that the moment has come when any oaf can exercise himself in feeble caricatures of figures of authority. Not that these people are not deserving subjects of criticism or mockery, but the twittery of such commentators as Zammit Tabona cannot but serve to undermine the validity of such endeavours.
His giddy opener, however, soon reveals itself as nothing but a prelude to a broadside against the peccadilloes of "the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy". I confess that my free time is fairly limited these days, but should KZT wish, I could quickly glance over his preposterous articles before he files, if only to sort out the woeful mish-mash of demotic styles and hone the P.G.Wodehouse-lite tone every other Maltese columnist believes they are affecting:

"Elizabeth II, despite her disastrously deficient progeny, is, despite the Mrs Bucket hats, a success story quite unlike the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy, now languishing in an Italian gaol on charges of prostitution and corruption. Having lived most of his life in exile, this descendant of kings, emperors and dukes, cast to the winds the overriding maxim that royalty has to live automated lives as chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche."

As if the vaguely schizophrenic quality of most Times' columnists were not bad enough, almost all of them are forced by the childish layout of the newspaper to indulge in a string of non sequitirs loosely linked together by transparent, and ultimately failed, devices like the following:

"The Casa Savoia has lost the plot for good.
Therefore to move to a slightly different location, Brussels, we have had some equally contrasting voting by our own home-grown MEPs."

The "therefore" festers there like week-old roadkill, but it does the job. As much as it may look like it, Zammit Tabona’s 1,305 words of drivel will not just write themselves. Sadly, for the
long-suffering readers of The Times, they won’t read themselves either; so, on and on, you must plough on through an alternation between faux profundity and domestic troubles so trivial they sound like the transcript from a fishwives’ conversation.
Suitably, his concluding paragraph is a chronicle of political and journalistic squabbles so clearly designed exclusively for Zammit Tabona’s own insular readership that he cannot deign himself to make any sense at all:

“In addition, Charles Polidano was reported to have had a violent altercation with a fellow columnist [Note: As violent as a handbag to the face can be] about whether he is or isn't a baron. I believe the case has been referred to the Committee of Privileges of the Maltese Nobility and is being considered. Despite all this David Casa attended the rally because he said he believed that the environment was the PN's top priority and had the audacity to mention the landfills affair that was stopped simply because a brave MP had the gall to stymie his own party. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando where are you?”