Sixteen Degreens of Credibility

The dial on the Geiger counter of stupidity at The Times has finally spun off its spindle. There is no point trying to be all fancy about it, or approaching the painful truth in narrowing circles of inferences. What analogies can fully encompass the foolishness of the president of the General Workers Union.
As always, some balance must be struck in assessing the full scale of Salv Sammut’s assault on accepted norms of sense and coherence. Any newspaper editor worthy of that name should understand that their job is to edit. Usually this means re-writing and re-arranging, but just as often it means cutting. Understandably, the meek editors at The Times might be unprepared to incur the wrath of the leader of Malta’s most credible trade union. But they would have to do no more than direct to slightly more credible publications.
Taking a cursory look round the opinion pages of the days international press, there is some indication of how these things ought to be done. The influential Burt Reynolds-impersonator Thomas Friedman’s column about China in today’s New York Times comes in at a fairly substantial 800 or so words and succeeds in sticking to its subject from beginning to end.
Picking an article at random from Times of London, we find a modest 730-word diary piece by erstwhile-anarcho-Trotskyist-but-latterly-contrarian-libertarian Mick Hume. Even the pompous Sergio Romano only manages a positively Ethiopian 550 words in the Corriere della Sera. And so and so forth. Across all nations and media cultures, it is an accepted wisdom that opinion columns begin to suffer past the 700-800-word mark. And The Times of Malta is all the proof you need of that. By the time I.M.Beck is preparing to wind up and head for the restaurant-of-the-week home straight, the sneaking temptation to go run the car engine and pull out the rubber hose starts becoming very real. And he’s one of the vaguely amusing ones. Sort of.
Sammut’s effort, coming in it a wheezing 1,057 words, does not pay heed to these conventions of brevity, and his editors do nothing to help him out of the hole he digs himself into. It is a standard litany of pompous cretinism about credibility, a word that he uses no less than 16 times, so there is only a cruel kind of enjoyment to be had in savouring its details. The contrived attempt at erudition of the opening paragraph is only one instance of this cringe-worthiness. There he relates, with undisguised admiration, details from the decidedly un-syndicalist life of the Cynic Diogenes:

“It was in his nature to live in an empty tub and walk through the streets of
Athens with a lantern in his hands in broad daylight.”

That Sammut aspires to the values of a man that lives in a tub, an empty one at that, is probably quite revealing about his own credibility.
The article turns out pretty quickly to be Sammut’s riposte to a television program that he saw which he didn’t enjoy very much. Which is all fine, of course. Malta is quite used to having this bickering played out publicly like some kind of junkyard dog-fighting contest.
But at the point Sammut should probably have been thinking of making his concluding remarks, something odd happens. As he writing the frankly disturbing words below, his eyes wander off and, it is likely, his legs too follow suit towards the television set:

“Credibility is a universal problem. It could be talked about and scrutinised in
every sphere of life. But it most distinguishes itself in politics. This is the
arena where it is most violently raped.”

When he returns to his seat, he begins with:

“As I write, the news that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been found
guilty and will be punished for his crimes has just been broken.”

Just like that! And so what started out a slightly idiotic stream of consciousness item of recrimination becomes a thoroughly bizarre foray into international affairs, a subject that I was unaware came within the GWU’s remit.
Which brings us back to our original point. What exactly was the editor of The Times doing while he was meant to be pruning this article, or even better throwing it straight into the wastepaper basket. Hiding in a cabinet and waiting for Salv Sammut to leave the office is my guess.

Wholly Fool

Can a man be good without knowing it, or to phrase this quandary in Christian terms, can a man be good apart from revelation and the grace of Christ? The question has troubled the minds of some of the greatest moral philosophers and theologians throughout history. Thomas Aquinas would argue that for the man that could conduct himself in a model fashion within the civic context, goodness is indeed possible. But what is this worth in the absence of Christ?
Here, let us dwell upon the redeeming quality of logic and reason in the timeless dialogue with this enigma. Aristotelianism brings us frustratingly close to the essence of being, in its moral fullness and its complex examinations of goodness and its opposite; evil. And then, of course, there is Desmond Zammit Marmarà.
In the cosmic order of things, what is the moral value of a man whose essence, utterly divorced from the very slightest notion of either logic or reason, nonetheless lightens the darkest corners of the most melancholy soul? On what side of the Lord does the Punchinello archetype sit in all these grand celestial designs? The buffoon is after all a lord, if only of the absurd. A fool is sovereign over his own moral and emotional destiny, but is this autonomy a reward of subterfuge and low cunning?
Naturally, this is all the domain of mystery. To preserve the commedia dell’arte analogies, is Zammit Marmarà the comic and sometimes wily harlequin servant of countless opera, or the clumsy Petrushka of Russian folklore. An additional nuance to this query is lent by the latter figure. The original Petrushka comedies began to be sanitised in the early 20th century, at which point they were increasingly interpreted as a ill-coordinated marionette of childish appeal. Before then, in conformity with the often gruesome traits of Russian folklore, Petrushka was a murderous fool and no benign bedtime figure.
Perhaps, though, we are casting the net too far and back. For anyone who sniggered at the primitive spectacle a weeks back of a North Korean newsreader announcing her country’s entry into the ranks of nuclear powers, the tone and content of Zammit Marmarà’s latest column will seem strikingly familiar:

“I often meet people, whose involvement in politics is minimal, who ask me: ‘When one separates the facts from the fiction created by the Nationalist media about the Labour leader, who is the real Alfred Sant?’ Since Dr Sant will, hopefully, be Malta's next Prime Minister, this question deserves an immediate answer.

First of all, Dr Sant is a great leader. He brings out the best of the people who work for him, tolerates no incompetence but always adds a humane touch to all his actions…”

On this occasion, it is quite impossible to selective pluck quotable extracts as there as little in this article which cannot be savoured for full comic effect. All the text invariably evokes the kind of decadent laughter one might have imagined only existed in the performance halls graced by the Catholic Institute’s travelling troupe.
I have rarely seen an audience as gripped by hysterical laughter as the one I saw in Birzebbuga primary school reacting to some forgettable gag about pastizzi. For the more blue-eyed reader, it should be explained that this was an astoundingly gynaecological joke, which put lie to tired observations on the sexual immovability of the Catholic order, it must be said.
Anyhow, lest one should harbour illusions as to the virtuousness of the amusement to be derived from dipping into Zammit Marmarà’s breathtakingly craven musings, this is the level of wit we are operating on.
Which brings us inexorably to the opening point. What does natural order reserve for the joy and mirth that such tripe brings to the ordinary working man? Before rushing on to metaphysical matters, however, should the Maltese public not at least be urged to clamour for this man to awarded some sort of honorary republican order?

Roam Around the World

Correspondence in the local Maltese press regularly treats the reader to heated polemics about the most adequate fashion in which to translate particularly problematic items of new vocabulary. This emphasis is unfortunate, insofar as it serves to needlessly exaggerate the inadequacies of the Maltese language. It is, in fact, a pity that more attention is not paid to those aspects of the national tongue that are so nuanced and exclusive as to present a point of pride. Perhaps the best representative of this select vocabulary is the word “miskin” as when used to describe a pathetic person.

To be exact, this particular meaning of the word is not solely limited to Maltese. Predictably, it contains same shades of significance in Arabic, from which language the word is derived. Less intuitively, the dialectal Sicilian usage of “meschino” (as distinct from the purely Italian word, meaning petty*) also carries the same effect. In all instances, however, the term conveys an understanding a pathos-laden condescension that the English “wretch” does not satisfactorily capture.

In wanting to illuminate the puzzled learner of Maltese though, one could do much worse than direct the enquirer to Roamer’s most recent column. In truth, almost any of this person’s columns would be useful in this respect, but wanting to establish a hierarchy of miskin-ness, it is as well to start from the top. Meanwhile, for connoisseurs of world cinema, the most useful analogue would be the itinerant, hopelessly benevolent and ultimately doomed priest hero of Luis Buñuel’s sadistic masterpiece Nazarin. Indeed, beneath all his Panglossian incoherence is a pitiable core of tragic simple-mindedness.

From his opening sally, Roamer pleads for compassionate mercy in the face of his own inanity:

"(a bit of a roam around if you will forgive the dreadful pun; plenty of other sources for Budget observations and comments)"

It is frankly inconceivable that this pun, which is barely a pun anyway, has only now come to its author’s attention. Indeed, it always seemed more likely that the very pen name was itself an improbably ironic inversion of the column’s indefatigably parochial worldview. As it is, the joke itself is piteous to a degree that only Maltese is able to properly express.

Sure enough, the article proper begins with a stunned awe that lends more than a hint to the startled attitude one might expect of a rabbit caught in headlights. For some unfortunate species, this experience can constitute a transient moment of sensory displacement; for Roamer and his ilk, it is a permanent state of being.

"Ever since God sent the earth spinning on its axis the only person who will be able to stop it spinning will be God. Meanwhile, we must watch in some amazement, at least, and with some degree of horror, or amusement at what is going on around us."

Sure enough, he soon comes to his insular senses after this initially galactic survey. In the course of roaming around the world’s hotspots, which are apparently ordered in importance in direct proportion to their distance from Roamer himself. About Iran, he notes worriedly:

"Nearer than is good for us, Iran continues on its course, a course it denies, to create a nuclear bomb."

Not too close for little skirmishes though:

"Proxy wars may be a better bet until such time as proxy outruns its meaning."

More reassuring for Malta is the ongoing crisis in East Asia, as Roamer explains in this bizarre sentence:

"Further than is bad for us, North Korea's declaration that it carried out a nuclear test, set a tiger among the Bambis in Asia and China the lion-hearted."

From the safety of his bomb-proofed bunker, Roamer does feel emboldened enough to launch the odd fusillade at the real villains of our time. Like his equally humourless British counterpart, Simon Heffer, Roamer presumes that referring to informal politicians in formal terms makes for a devastating putdown. And “Bill” Clinton is spared nothing in this verbal IED:

"William denies the charges [that he did little about the Al-Qaeda threat] even if he could only show, as signs of his determination to come to grips with Al-Qaeda, a few missile attacks lobbed into Afghanistan that served no purpose whatsoever except to give America's enemies heart - this after the destruction of American embassies in East Africa and an attack on an American warship. And we saw him earlier this month, his jaw set and resolute, his eyes glinting as he finger-wagged a reporter this dodgy dodger who dodged the draft and became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States."

And with an unwieldy pedagogic lurch forward, he projects his roving beady eye to South America. One eye on his trusty Atlas Four and his fingers flicking through a 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, he courses his pioneering path forward and, largely, downwards:

"To the south of the United States lies Brazil and next to it, Venezuela. They are both in the news for a number of reasons. Brazil, which is 4,000 km by 4,300 km and a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty"

But there is nothing more comforting after almost 2,000 words of roaming (and rambling) around the globe than to return to the homely bosom of Christian issues, namely the decline of the institution of marriage and humanity’s general descent into a moral swamp of Godless iniquity. And after that, a quick anecdote about the time that actor Robert Morley gave an entire speech with his flies undone.

* To be exact, “meschino” did mean “miskin” in its archaic form, although this now remains a largely regional variation.

Di-ving into the Deep End

Much has been made of Malta's recent historic victory over the mighty football titans of Hungary. To put this in some context, consider that Hungary drew 0-0 against Croatia during qualification round for the 2006 World Cup. These results would appear to demonstrate that Malta is, statistically speaking, a superior footballing to even England, which was disastrously, defeated 2-0 by Croatia last weekend. All thanks, it might be added, to the efforts of Marsaxlokk striker Andre' Schembri.
However, as I noted in the comments section of the Lanzarote blog, the achievements of the Maltese national team are as of nothing when compared with the historical ascendancy of Marsaxlokk F.C. The most recent development is that Marsaxlokk have gone top, having defeated the only team that can really compete against them... Marsaxlokk.
Now, I have never subscribed to the fashion of deriding di-ve, which I find somewhat akin to firing Katyushas on a Sisters of Mercy orphanage, but this latest blunder is truly a masterstroke of editorial incompetence:

"Marsaxlokk rose to the top of the table when they beat Marsaxlokk in a kenly contested encounter yesterday."

It is frankly surprising that in addition to the existing squiggly red and green lines that Andrew Borg Cardona relies on so completely to make his I.M.Beck columns sound literate, there isn't also a third variant which signifies "you are complete frigging moron". For the sake of di-ve’s editorial team, one can only hope that the word processing program in the much-awaited Microsoft Vista operating system has been accordingly upgraded.

Sewer and Be Damned

How Anthony Licari fumed indignantly when it was suggested on this site that his writing had all the coherence of that which might be expected of a person under the influence of hallucinogenic substances. Not that it was written by an actual drug user (a useful legalistic distinction, it seems to me); just about as grounded in reason. Indeed, for all the indubitable harm that droppers of acid cause Maltese society, they could rarely be accused of the kind of teeth-grinding tedium and stultifying senselessness that this country’s columnists have inflicted upon their readers.

Back in the day, Licari harrumphed, as is his prerogative, about nameless trolls foaming at the mouth, referring ever so obliquely to Fausto Majjistral and myself. On that occasion, his peculiar brand of writing was so suffused with feverish purpleness and meaningless non sequitirs that it is unlikely that anybody but the people in question had the faintest clue what he was on about. His clumsy attempt at caustic invective thus fell catastrophically flat on that occasion, though I would be lying if I did not say that his words did leave an impression on me. After all, he may have had a point.
Is it my place to question the pronouncements of a person who has studied at three universities, a fact he takes much pride in? Unlike Licari, I am not a lecturer in psycholinguistics (or sociolinguistics and geolinguistics, for that matter), and can therefore not presume to question the state of mind of a person capable of giving form to this sentence:

"Meanwhile, the sick brandy continues to make us smart and reel. For, after all, it was said that I am the coach and I like to react to serious advice with loud, metallic, hysterical laughter while playing the lyre. This continuous laughter by conservativo maximo is getting on the nerves of the Nats."

For those unwilling to read the original article, let me explain. Incidentally, you would not be blamed for the omission, for the piece is most, how shall we say, literarily challenging (ahem). In launching his ruthless excoriation of the Malta Tourism Authority’s recent activities, he begins with a bold and fittingly linguistic sleight of hand. As even the most dull-witted reader will apprehend, the word brand, as in “Brand Malta”, is quite similar to the word brandy. Well, quite similar.
Ok, this next bit is a tricky. Once you have established that the two apparently unrelated words are phonetically (is this right, Anthony?) consonant, you then use one to refer to the other. Thus achieving wit. So, but sick brandy (hic), he means a medicinal cure that makes you reel and, well, er, you get it
Admittedly, that one was hard. Let us try a real easy one next. When you want to make people laugh uncontrollably at your mastery of the humorous idiom, merely use a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. Cynics will object that this device, known as sarcasm, is “the lowest form of wit”. But as any schoolchild can tell you, “wit is the highest form of humour,” and sarcasm gets no wittier than when it is deployed by Malta’s most accomplished geolinguistician:

"Few people would not admit nowadays that tourism is enjoying a lovely nosedive as a result of incompetence, inefficiency and downright pig-headedness."

But Licari is not just about wicked wordplay and verbal mastery. He isn’t pulling his punches when it comes to weighty social and academic issues that dominate the day. Indeed, he is thirsty for scientific rigour and will resolutely refuse to give in to ham-fisted approximation and obtuse generalisations:

"Men of the West seem to be increasingly finding wives and partners in Eastern Europe. No formal scientific study that I know of has attempted to analyse this phenomenon. However, Western newspapers, often for reasons of sensationalism, like to print stories about East European women who have 'tricked' West European men."

He later concludes that these people are little more than “veritable village idiots”, so not a lot mileage there it turns out.
On and on it goes in this eclectic (erratic and incoherent, for the Philistines) vein. Yet, the last paragraph did force a theatrical double-take out of me. And please recall that this is written by a person who took such umbrage at my decidedly restrained characterisation of his excruciating articles:

"Cartoonists are an important element in journalism - even if few of them have actually followed a course in journalism and I don't understand how they are called "journalists". Even less journalistic are cartoonists who have an obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions and with whatever belongs to all things biological and putrid. If you know anyone in this pathetic psychological situation, please be a good Christian and suggest to him/her to visit a psychologist who can identify the origins of such morbidity before moving on to its possible cure."

Coyly, with a cheeky little finger poised over his mouth Austin Powers-style, he is effectively implying that Maurice Tanti Burlò is clinically insane and possibly suffers from faecal fixation. I feel entitled to say this as he does after all invite his reader to nominate candidates with “obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions”.

I’m not certain that Tanti Burlò is actually obsessed with toilet functions (there seem little grounds for such a sensational charge), but if Licari has such a valiant belief in his convictions, as he has indeed previously claimed, perhaps he ought to be that kind Christian and issue his benevolent invitation to Tanti Burlò in his next column. As a psycholinguist, heaven knows that he is considerably more qualified than me to perform the deed. He wouldn't want to appear hypocritical now, would he?

Would You Like Food With Your Salt?

As the Book of Proverbs tells us, “he that has knowledge spares his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise: and he that shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding”.
As this quote evidences, even the teachings of the Holy Scriptures show us that baby Jesus would appreciate it if, from time to time, such people as would be normally predisposed to brimming over with pointless waffle would only restrain themselves from stating the obvious. Yet for all their Solomonic wisdom, what the assembled busybodies behind the Book of Proverbs potboiler could not have apprehended back in Bible days is that newspapers simply do not write themselves. No indeed, people like Frank Salt write them.
When Salt first began writing his pieces for The Times, people might have been forgiven for wondering how his real estate background could possibly give him the grounds to set forth on whatever tickled his fancy. My own dealings with estate agents have gratefully been circumscribed to their periodical extortion of my earnings and the odd call on my part to complain about a mouldy fridge. If, however, Matthew the estate agent had ever presumed to come round to my flat to share his views on the importance of a prudent fiscal policy for a country's stability, well I'm not sure what I might have done.
If, moreover, he had shouted advice on how to save water through the letterbox while I cowered behind the sofa pretending to be out, things could have taken an ugly turn. After all, just like lawyers, estate agents are at best licensed thieves. You would no more ask an estate agent for energy-saving tips, than you would ask a cat burglar for advice on what locks to install. Sure enough, Matthew (that weedy little creep) never transgressed in the ways described above. But not so Frank Salt.
Having gorged himself to satiety on the easy riches that a profession that even a trained seal could master without much difficulty, Salt has imperiously announced that he has no aspiration to see his fellow countrymen join him in his state of Cheshire cat smugness.

"I know it might sound strange, but one of my worst nightmares is that Malta strikes a lot of oil in our territorial waters, become a very rich country, and then the population will not have to work or want to work, so they sit down and do nothing."

Do nothing but write barely literate columns for the Times that is.
But before the Maltese reader is tempted to cast themselves into deeper penury by furiously flinging their PC out of the closest opening of their windowless hovel, please consider that ceci n'est pas une article, as Magritte himself might have quipped.
Sure enough, a quick scan down the page reveals the horrible truth that Frank Salt is "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate". When the clods at the MTA are not doing a group impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, it transpires they might be taking the advice of this erstwhile camarade de bataille in their bid to civilise the semi-feral Maltese nation.
As is often the case with self-appointed sages, Salt deals with onerous burden of concocting actual solutions with a dizzying hail of rhetorical inquisitiveness:

“Now what will happen when the low-cost airlines start coming to Malta and become very successful? Make no mistake about it, in the future they will be very successful indeed, and so too will Air Malta. What will happen then? Will some of these new tourists be accommodated in the same substandard hotels? Will some of our hotels stay in the same dilapidated condition they are in now? Will these hotel owners say thanks for the tourists and do nothing to rejuvenate and renovate their premises?”

This passage reeks of Salt’s terror at how Malta’s barbaric lumpenproletariat will foul up this golden opportunity. And, as we all know, estate agents are such a delicate breed.
As usual with these wretched columns, the substance is Procol Harum pale and found ferreted away in some apologetic mouse of a paragraph:

“The Malta Tourism Authority has established rules, regulations and standards, and these must all be enforced properly so that when we receive the large increase of tourists that will definitely be coming to Malta and Gozo, they will all be accommodated at a standard they deserve.”

In short, the MTA should do its job, instead of rushing around and overacting like some pantomime dame. But since Salt himself is the "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate", you have to wonder how many of those halcyon days were spent in the shameful indulgence of getting “away with not doing anything”.

Praise Be to Sant

After a few month's break from blogging (about The Times anyway), the time seems ripe to return to the activity. For a start, one can only hope that the private investigators that Anthony Licari was implying he wanted to put on my tail will finally have lost the scent. This particular bloggist has been half way across the planet to ensure that would happen. And so much more has happened in the meantime.
The Fool's Cap has assiduously slipped off the blogrolls of even the most faithful admirers and hateful antagonists. Racial intolerance very much remains a feature of Maltese life, although an unprecedented proliferation of shiny magazines has happily taken people's minds off such depressing matters. Planes continue to crash into New York buildings, but they are now much smaller and piloted by baseball players. The Education Channel still exists, but it unaccountably becomes older with every day that passes. Apparently, the bank in Albert Town was closed down years ago. I wish someone would tell me these things.
But The Times... The Times of Malta remains as ever the last refuge of every mental halfwit that metaphorically wanders into its empty vessels. Ever it was thus.

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It has surely been observed here before that some things are simply beyond mockery. Yet, with every passing Wednesday the preoccupying prospect of that prat Alfred Sant presiding over the proud provinces of Malta as Prime Minister presses upon its proletariat with preoccupying proximity. To read this preceding sentence with anything resembling discernment would necessitate the inevitable conclusion that it was largely nonsense. Any sensible editor would be excused the act of transforming prose (oh God!) based upon such a patently childish ludic concept as that of insisting that all titles begin with the letters "PR" into an improvised game of wastepaper basketball.
For those disposed to believing the most outrageous conspiracy theories, it might be considered that The Times has long been operating on the principle of "give them enough rope". And if Alfred Sant has hanged himself four score and seven times already, let nobody accuse of him not being willing to rush headlong into more punishment.
Before anyone think that this blog’s hiatus has transformed its author into an acolyte of the lazy I.M.Beck habit of relentlessly laying into the same straw man of politics, it should be said that Alfred Sant was quite justified in objecting to a recent vignette depicting him as a purveyor of drainage, or something. The original cartoon, drawn by the spectacularly untalented and unfunny Maurice Tanti Burlò, was crude and stupid. It was also a supremely pathetic attempt at satire at the expense at a person not running country.
But, on the other hand, if you will look for it, as Sant does on a tragic weekly basis, you will get it. Of course, any fool can titter at him for poring over his partly very well-thumbed dictionary for inspiration. Not any fool, however, could foresee that Sant would raid his record collection in his ever more desperate hunt for ideas. So it was that this week’s article, Procol Harum pale, came to be.
With a doleful attempt at distraction he tries to claim that it has not taken him literally a week without sleep to write this article:

“In the past few weeks, I worked closely with the Malta Labour Party's spokesmen on working conditions and on youth affairs, as they finalised draft position papers and plans on these subjects.”

If only, he must have been thinking to himself at the time, you could switch around the letters ‘d’ and ‘p’. But what the hell is a praft dosition? That won’t work. Little does he know that PRAFT stands for Predator/Red Alert Fishing Team (according to Internet acrnomym finders anyway), a theme that could finally compel him to discuss the disgracefully neglected area of Marsaxlokk-related issues. But what with Mintoff’s summer house in Delimara that would not do at all.
Well, much in the way that customers of long-defunct Marsaxlokk video rental outlet Green Dash would wear out the tape of Best of the Best by fast forwarding to the climactic fight scenes, seasoned Sant-watchers have learnt that the fun of his articles lies in scanning ahead to the tenuous substance of his column’s title.
And how much waffle we had to put up with this week. First, some rubbish about globalisation, labour markets and how he used to attend Socialist International meetings. After these reminiscences about his Leninist youth, he gets rather disappointingly to the point:

“When analysts talk about the ‘friction’ of labour markets, as they still do, they refer mainly to the social legislation which protects workers' rights and conditions, and to the role of unions. Such rights and conditions should no longer be printed in bold - they have to be made pale.”

What exactly that means is anybody’s guess. Although, much like Anthony Licari, I have studied at three universities, only one of these institutions has been infested with the revolutionarily disposed left-wingers that spout this sort of socialist mysticism. And those people I avoided like the plague. And on and on he goes about “friction” for several more paragraphs, doubtless disconcerting his “PR” regular.
Yet, if ever there was a case for letting Sant getting to the end of things, that is to be found in his columns. After stringing out a whole article on the back of the weakest imaginable analogy, he breaks the suspense with this wet fart of a conclusion:

“The pressure continues from people who prefer it like this: they come from the corporate world, naturally, but they find supporters from within the centre-right political spectrum. The perspectives they promote remind me of a hit song by a forgotten pop group of the late 1960s, Procul Harum, as they repeatedly call for a whiter shade of pale; for the paleness we have is, in their view, still not enough.”

Prathetic. Absolutely prathetic.

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.

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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?”

Horse Sense

All the seats on the bus are free and he has to sit next to you. Why? That's right, I'm talking about Austin Sammut. Happy as you go, you're turning the pages of The Times towards the latest instalment of the Wizard of Id and a happy half hour on the wordwheel. Maybe even a quick look at which famous people were born and died on the day. Yi Sun-sin, the famous Korean admiral, born today? Wonders never cease!
And what's on Prime tonight? Ah, Keeping Up Appearances. That program will literally never cease to be rip-roaringly funny. Which is just as well, as people from Cape Town to Kowloon must have had to watch the damn thing more than a thousand times over the last ten years.
And so on and so forth.
But then that wretched Austin Sammut had to ruin it all. His column on Tuesday, mostly about scratched pavements, believe it or not, was partially redeemed by this snippet, which has something ever so slightly Beckettesque about it:

"I had one relief. There was no horse excrement around. A miracle indeed."

He had one relief, ladies and gentlemen. If you listen very carefully, you may just be able to make out the sound of a bead of sweat sliding down his clammy face. A miracle indeed!
And on and on and on he drones. Next, as you wish you could whisked away by death's munificent grace, he begins to bang on about rubbish, like some kind of pantomime mother-in-law:

"The latter council cannot even keep garbage away from our capital city's noble street corners (I wrote to them about this months ago and have been totally ignored) - but perhaps that's the wardens, and, again, more later. Explanations from all and sundry would be most welcome. I have seen excrement bags under the backsides of horses all over Europe, but why not here?"

Or to put in other way:

"I told about her about the state of that road. It shouldn't be allowed, I tell you. I told 'er about that road before, it wants cleaning. What are the neighbours going to think? Oooh me back. Been to the doctor. No good. Says it's psychosomething, bloody cheek. Mind you, I told 'er about the road, you should have seen it last Sunday, covered in rubbish it was. It's no skin off my nose, but what are the neighbours going to think? And them horses. Without the bags. It's a disgrace. Mess all over the shop. What are the neighbours going to think? I can't see what she ever saw in 'im."

The column is written from beginning to end in this bumbling, but ultimately hard to dislike, fashion. Who could be so stony-hearted as to fail to fall about laughing at Sammut's low comedy depiction of street wardens' antics? In my mind's eye, all the action he describes has been speeded up in the style of a Keystone Kops comedy, with Sammut playing an irrepressible Harold Lloyd-type character, one moment being pounced on by a street warden, the next he is running along the street holding a bucket under a horse's soiled bottom, and some day perhaps he'll be hanging off one of the clock faces of Mosta Cathedral.

Turning Over a New Leaf

I imagine that I was not the only one affected by Blogger's lapse into crapness over the weekend, so I have taken the opportunity to toy with a new layout. A company of web designers has charged me a reasonable fee of Lm1,500 for a look that I find both fresh and sober. They have given me their solemn word that it is completely original work, and I for one do not intend to doubt them. Readers may rest assured, however, that the content will remain as stale and repetitive as ever.

You Must be Kidding

It is said that parents should refrain from arguing before their children, lest this demonstration of domestic friction be interpreted as a compromise of authority. It was, therefore, distressing to see a squabble about child welfare, which has been as unseemly as it has been achingly dull, continued in Sunday’s issue of The Times. Dr Ruth Farrugia has elected herself as the referee of this arcane dispute between Frank Muscat and Bryan Magro, former chair of the Children's Board and policy co-ordinator in the Ministry of the Family and Social Solidarity respectively. Meanwhile, Frank Muscat also parries blows directed at him with another letter to the paper, which succeeds, and doubtless precedes, many others.
There is not much one can contribute on the specific subject of the controversy and it would only be a most foolhardy individual that would dare to trade blows with these world-class bores. And anyway, who could rival the death kiss stolidity of prose like that of Dr. Farrugia? But Farrugia is guilty not only of being a crushing bore, but also of subjecting the rest of the world to what evidently constituted the aridity of her day-to-day being.
It is quite possible there may still be some people who believe that the halls of power are populated by canny horse-traders, underhanded brokers and mercurial exponents of the elite. So how upsetting will it be for this people when they discover that the only persons in those hallowed halls are in the fact dreary drones whose very physical existence is only justified by the next deadline for the next monotonous ream of bureaucratic insignificance? Which is fine, of course. The world needs filers and clerks and data entry goons, for where would we be without them. But like Gogol’s Akaki Akakievich, they must surely realise that any attempt to rise from within the ranks of the meaningless scribe will certainly result in metaphysical annihilation.
But what do we have here? Instead allowing one pile of red-tape literature be subsumed by the next generation of similarly needless reports, Farrugia gives it an airing which it neither deserves nor needs. And she is not the only guilty of this. How often must lazy, ignorant ministers and MPs regurgitate the content of committee findings and parliamentary speeches under the pretence of being original or, Christ Almighty forbid, vaguely interesting? They take us for fool, and they are probably right to do so. They also take the editors of The Times for fools, which they are wrong to do. They are wrong as the editors of The Times are not mere fools, but half-witted dullard mildew of the very lowest order.
If one were so keen to read the written cretinism of the lumpen buffoons that vacate the chambers of the pompously named Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity, a visit to its website would fully suffice, one would have imagined. It is there that one can read such fatuous observations as this:

"Children are our most valuable natural resource. Moreover, research has amply demonstrated that the first few years of children’s lives are crucial in their development. This knowledge has inspired the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity to develop further this important building block of social policy."

That children are Malta’s most valuable natural resource is a sentiment of nauseating pointlessness. It is also false, of course. As Bishop Nikol Cauchi would be able to tell you, modern Maltese children are utterly stupid and unable to hold a pencil the right way up. They are also among the laziest, fattest and greediest in the world. It is hard to take any consolation from the fact that young people with these attributes will probably not possess the mental or physical faculties to commit crime. Though since future policeman will also probably be afflicted with similar gastric gigantism, we may well be looking forward to some amusing street chases in the years to come.
So, we have the dull and idiotically written websites, but we must still have this rubbish pushed under our noses by Farrugia and her boneheaded ilk? Is there any reason that cruelty to Times readers should be considered any less despicable than cruelty to children?

Fully Booked

As though in some kind of spiritual communion with Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi, Noemi Zarb opens her article in Saturday’s paper the metonymic theme, ironically enough, of judging books by their cover:

"Show me the books you have at home and I'll tell you all about your personality!"

To her credit, the impudence of the boast is a couple of notches lower in arrogance than Cauchi’s dogmatic creed, which he barks at the reader without a by-your-leave.

"Tell me what you read, and I tell you what you are."

Yet, how rich is the irony of the amount of whimsical tripe that will be churned out by the bucket load for this godforsaken UNESCO day of the book that everybody seems so excited about. Zarb’s contribution is a vomit-inducing flight of fairy dust whimsy that doesn’t fail, as is customary in this sort of article, to patronise, insult and irritate almost anybody who has ever deemed to pick up a book and read it.
As is also habitual in this variety of giddy literary appreciation, no concession is made for level-headed reasoning. Keen to assume a virtually Apollonic status of wisdom, no book can ever be dismissed by Zarb:

“Each and every [book is] intoxicating in [its] own special way.”

There should be a more eloquent way of putting this but, what absolute rubbish. Unless she has found some method of distilling the pages of Paulo Coelho into a low-grade variant of moonshine, she would have to do better than her twee childhood reminiscences to support that grand claim. Of course, given that Zarb’s writing suggests that she might be exactly the sort cotton-brained sap that goes weak at the knees at the very sound of the name Coelho, or some other such pseudo-profound Latinate crud, it is not to be excluded that she actually believes her own premise.
Like her bishoply precursor, Zarb eventually comes around to the sermon portion of her lesson. J.K. Rowling will doubtless be delighted, therefore, to hear that Zarb thinks that all the illiterate children of Malta need to turn into charismatic bookworms like herself is to read more “gripping fantasy”, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel. Next thing you know, this skittish gomeril will probably be wanting to send boys to school in flowery bonnets:

“If you want children to keep on turning the page to see what happens next, then the pulse must start racing as admiration and loathing tingle the blood.”

This quaint image of children’s reading proclivities is so farcically Victorian that it tips two-footedly into fantasy itself.
So kids, hasn’t this been a great week for reading (and writing)? You’ve had the words of a Tweedledum look-alike, Nikol Cauchi, and now the candy-floss blithering of an escapee from a Don Bluth film. If that doesn’t stop you reading, nothing will.

Bishop to Book Five

Apologies for the interruption in the regular service, but with the demands of academia being what they are, work has kept me away from the ribaldry that is reading The Times. Even for one such as myself, who has studied at three universities, the pressures of writing even half-decent academic copy does not come easy.

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

The authority of Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi is immediately evident from the austere, ultramontanist severity of his face. But quite how he thinks his gilt crucifixes and collection of porphyry cameos of the Virgin Mary give him the authority to lecture me on my reading habits is beyond me. Wringing his porky, episcopal fingers, he appears to wonder whether the book in its current form will even last to the end of his days. Amidst feverish visions of incarnadining hosts he has seen the future, and it resembles a nightmarish enactment of Fahrenheit 451, the flames of hell burning away at the wafer-thin leaves of civilisation that keep us from the edge of madness:

"Yet, in this electronic age, where computers and the internet have become so widely used, some people inevitably ask whether it is anachronistic to talk about books and other printed material."

Words that most people will have read on precious, flammable paper. But what vice-bound human folly could be at the source of such lascivious abandon of the written word, one is almost compelled to ask.

"The use of free time is one of the most pressing problems confronting people today. There are so many forms of amusement in which people can indulge, that many may doubt whether reading continues to be a popular pastime in the same way it was before."

Being a bishop, Cauchi will of course be profoundly alive to the dangers that an excess of free time will leave one open to. But can he really be writing in the Times of Malta when he ascribes the reason for this assumed decline in reading hours to the difficulties of free time? (Not the lack of it, mind. The ecclesiastical scamp!). But for all his years of dabbling in the dark arts of popery, he is quite unable to bumble into irony. Speaking of the reading habits of his compatriots:

"... it seems the majority are content to have a look at their favourite daily newspaper"

Well, I suppose if Jesus Christ was content to be nailed to cross for our sins, then that sentence could just about stand. Sure enough, the implied rebuke of that statement portends a sermon on the wholesomeness of literary indulgence, as long it is of the right type:

"Some books are capable of doing more harm than good while others should only be taken on by those who are knowledgeable about a particular subject. So selection is important."

If anyone had been so naïve to venture into this article with the belief that it would not be deadened by the heavy hand of monkish prescription, that line would pretty have much killed all residual hope. Patronisingly, he affects an avuncular concern for the reader’s ability to read Milton and Shakespeare.

“But for lighter every day purposes a number of shorter books and booklets are available on a range of subjects that are educational and escapist.”

Booklets? Everyday purposes? A range of subjects? Who exactly does this man think he is talking to? As if Malta doesn’t have enough bishops who always talk as though in conversation with the mentally subnormal, Cauchi contrives to effortlessly insult those very few who will have bothered to read his article all the way through. I really don’t think that “content” is the word he should have used back there.

If CMB Falls, Does He Make a Sound?

Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici's columns are not an experience that anyone should be submitted to. This man is the literary equivalent of Ryvita, except not as good for you. His voice is dull, his face is dull, his very existence is dull. But by God, can there be anything on this earth more crushingly tedious than one of his articles. I would quite rather read the instruction manual for a bipolar junction transistor than plough through this dross, which anyone whose read this far might be contemplating reading:

"Private international law is a specialised segment within our legal system. It is triggered when Malta's courts of law are asked to consider lawsuits where issues before it affect some event, transaction or situation that is closely linked to a foreign judicial system and therefore necessitates recourse to foreign legal systems. This is better defined by our jurists as 'the rules voluntarily chosen by a given state for the decision of cases which have a foreign complexion'."

Well, then why did you write a definition, if you were going to give us a better anyway? God, why are you so bloodly bloodly boring?
Ok, so why read the article, the disinterested browser would ask themselves were they to visit this page. Why indeed, I reply. Even more pertinently, why was this dreary article ever written; doubtless by some unfortunate minion of the credited gentleman, I might add. I understand that there may well be certain individuals, whose drab temperament would probably see them better suited to taking residence under a mossy stone, that could find interest in prose so flat that it's practically inside out. But in a newspaper, I ask?
If only I could find solace in the attitude that today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper. For a start, Maltese people don't often eat fish and chips. And when they do it is not from a newspaper, but off a china plate and with a silver spoon. But can you imagine what writing this insipid could do to any food that touches it? It doesn't bear thinking about.
It's a good thing I'm writing this in the evening, so this wretch has only managed to ruin a handful of hours of my day.

Sharpwitted Shooters

Like any good reader of the The Times, I like a titter from time to time. As a result, my heart rose while going through the letters in Monday's edition. There were not one, but two letters under the title "Camouflaged Humour". The first was a sensible letter from Roger M. Flett in Munxar:

"While I often reel at their side-splitting joke of adding "and Conservationists" to the name of the hunters' federation, I seem to have suffered a complete sense-of-humour failure over the federation secretary Lino Farrugia's "tongue in cheek" quip, that hunters might want to use gloves to pick up shot birds. I am sorry, Aldo Azzopardi (March 29), but try as I may, I just can't see anything funny in a shot bird - with or without gloves."

Pretty straightforward really; a letter to complain about someone complaining that a newspaper had unfairly represented a facetious remark. With one letter in, one would imagine that the editor would be satisfied, but of course that would mean foregoing the words George Debono, of Sliema:

"Surely The Times should have realised that the mere mention of picking up a blood-spattered dead bird, with or without gloves on, is a seriously funny matter which causes hilarious laughter in hunting circles - as pointed out Aldo E. Azzopardi!
Where indeed is The Times' sense of humour?"

Now, I fear that this correspondent's grasp of wit may be too subtle or too crude for me to fully understand what it is that he intends with his remarks. The answer may be divined by means of inductive intuition. The original joke about picking up dead birds with gloves is not one of the funniest I've heard. There was quite a good one I knew once about a swearing parrot, but I'm quite sure that it didn't die. Meanwhile, the prospect of a Maltese hunter contracting a possibly fatal disease is not particularly amusing, though I admit it is slightly heartwarming.
Of course, anyone who has taken even a cursory interest in the humour of Maltese hunters will be familiar with what passes for bon mots amidst their circles. The usual sort of thing about blowing birds to bits, and so on.
So, if we accept that nobody could rationally believe that the original quip was actually funny, subsequent reaction of Times journalists notwithstanding, it is far from clear what George Debono is trying to say. It is likely that in the mould of so many that have gone before him, he has deployed the withering power of sarcasm in his cause. However, what that says for his ability to pass judgement on humour is another matter. So, perhaps before he asks people to locate their senses of humour, he should in fact establish that he has one himself.

Love Is...

Can you see Pope Benedict XVI as a sex therapist? Well, I couldn't either until reading Christine Sammut's fantastically bawdy piece of pastoral guidance on issues carnal in Wednesday's issue of The Times. It seems that these days, people just don't think they can get down with the kids unless they are prepared to talk about intra-sheet activity. But as George Bernard Shaw noted "Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!". But Sammut, on the other hand, certainly seems to know a thing or two about what one could coyly term as horizontal dancing, though the fact she seems to put Pope Benedict's latest hit encyclical on a par with the Kama Sutra is probably not a promising sign. From early into the article, one is assailed with the doubt about this person's authority on the subject:

"Our society, and mostly, the media, exalt one aspect of sexuality - the body and the physical aspect of sexuality - most commonly known as the Eros."

Most commonly known as Eros, you say. With the ambiguous and perversely prudish enlightenment characteristic of religious youth workers, Sammut proceeds to construct a frail and unconvincing position on the fulfilment, or lack thereof, that sex brings with it:

"Many young people have come to realise, only too often, that having a sexual relationship which is only fulfilled in its physical aspect brings them only to an 'ecstasy' which is short-lived and leaves them always searching for something more."

This sort of psychological reaction is not exclusive to sex of course. Indeed, as I read Pope Benedict's encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, I derived a transitory frisson of pleasure, but once the moment had passed I felt dirty, used and abused. After that I had to move on to harder stuff; some Thomas Aquinas, a draw on Saint Augustine, and a few lines of Cardinal Newman. In sexual matters, Sammut suggests that the youth look to heighten the intensity of their ecstasy by other means:

"Many are those who seek to embellish the experience through various means, some outright addictive or perverse. But the end result is always the same: emptiness and hurt which is gaping inside."

What Sammut means by means that outright perverse is probably not wise to speculate about. But it should be clear that while she is contrary to perversion resulting in hurt, it is not as though she is discouraging sharing the love in itself. Indeed, as she urges the young libertines of Malta:

"And so, our invitation to all young people is one: dare to open your gift!"

But it turns out that the gift is letting your other half discover you and connect with you spiritually. What utter drivel! Presumably, she must believe that this kind of clerical mumbo-jumbo can be sold to her horny-handed charges at the University, but what she is not aware of is that Maltese students are as hypocritical as they are dim. While they may eagerly go to seasonal masses and piously profess their Catholic identity, they equally conveniently forget about all that when it comes to the dirty business of spiritually unfulfilling, er, sexual relationships.
So, as grateful we doubtless are to Pope Benedict XVI (who Sammut promotes to Pope Benedict XVII in the byline) for endowing us with his sanctified views on Eros and agape, we will probably have to reconcile ourselves that its contents will be unheeded by the most of Christine Sammut's intended audience. So for the time being, it will be more Ann Summers and less Christine Sammut.

Don't Watch This Space

One of the more popular genres of columns appearing in The Times opinion pages are the articles ostensibly based on the given writer's academic background. Though journalists in most countries have been to University, none are so eager to prove evidence of this than those writing in Malta's paper of record. The skill of individual practitioners of this type of writing, inasmuch as they have any skill, is to apply the specifics of their often pointless academic discipline to the context of Malta. Which is where Charles Xuereb's article on Tuesday comes in. He begins innocently enough, with what looks like a feature on the upcoming Maltese TV schedules:

"At this time of year television stations in Malta are busy preparing their autumn schedules. Some have already made their calls public while others, notably the public broadcaster, is about to issue its call for new or established programmes to fill in the schedules between October 2006 and June 2007."

Of course, the cynical may note that television stations in Malta are not so much preparing the schedules as wondering how much telebejgh they will have to broadcast to pad out the schedule and pay for their cardboard sets and cover the salaries of their dipsomaniac lighting technicians. Immediately, the eagle-eyed reader will suspect that Xuereb is attributing the ultra-competitive strategies of British, American or Italian broadcasters to frankly pathetic morons that produce television locally. It takes quite some stretch of the imagination to think that sharp-suited media analysts at Net are at this very moment carefully designing some killer line-up to knock whatever amateurish variety show for and by spastics at Super One on a Saturday afternoon off the top of the ratings board.
Xuereb then laboriously concludes that, indeed, scheduling is not an actual function of Maltese television. He attributes this to tight financial resources, overlooking the fact that the people charged with the task are, more often than not, little more than dribbling jabberjaws. Though apparently, in their Cro-Magnon brilliance they have arrived at an astounding fact:

"Over the past decade or so Maltese television seems to have accepted the norm that popularity is the way ahead."

After a few more paragraphs of only very faintly relevant abstractions about the Maltese television scene, Xuereb takes refuge in the cosy drabness of academese, complete with customary bibliographic references:

"Media researchers, among them Timothy Legatt, a UK communications consultant, when discussing quality give special meaning to choice, range, variety, balance and appreciation. Mr Legatt concludes that popularity does not necessarily indicate viewers' opinions as to programme quality (Legatt in Ishikawa, 1996). Viewers tend to employ a different scale of values in judging quality."

Hm, yes, how very true. I admit that it's been a few years since I've properly watched Maltese television, as even when I have been in the country, the broken Melita Cable box will not show TVM. As it is that I regularly return for Christmas, I do get to watch L-Istrina, which profoundly challenges my "scale of values in judging quality". It does this because there is no part of rational brain that can feasibly account for how awful the experience of watching that show is. As I imagine is the case with most people, my scale of values ranges from excellent to absolutely terrible, yet L-Istrina so comprehensively transcends any accepted degree of badness, that the viewing experience becomes an almost mystical detachment from standard cognitive norms. And yet, L-Istrina is hardly a great departure in terms of quality and content from the standards of Maltese broadcasting, which leaves Xuereb's bookish observations on their arse.
The very title (Quality on Television) and reccuring theme of the article (the word "quality" appears thirty times) is fundamentally alien to the realties of super-cheapo local television. But Xuereb describes a scenario that sounds like another country, if not another planet:

"Professional broadcasters and distinguished members of the public on the other hand have specific criteria for quality on television. Broadcasters feel that quality lies in their work: technical accomplishment and programme content. In the latter they are concerned with clarity of objective, innovativeness and relevance to viewers' current concerns. This complements the view from on high where, according to a set of distinguished persons, quality broadcasting should offer diversity of choices, opportunities at good viewing times to as many different tastes and interests as possible and assumes programming to seek constantly to renew, not to repeat formulae, to explore, to take risks, to push the boat out, to extend the frontiers and to take itself and the audience by surprise."

The vast majority of broadcasters (which became considerably vaster after the death of Charles Arrigo) may be professional in the sense of being paid, but they are hardly professional in the sense of competent. As for the distinguished people who comment on programming in the papers, in Malta this primarily consists of those who believe that watching the Biography Channel constitutes the height of intellectual sophistication.

Pulling it Off

While most papers across the world are currently offering pull-out sections on the World Cup to entice readers, Il Foglio, owned by the Italian Prime Minister's wife, has adopted an unusual tack. The entirety of Wednesday's issue itself came as a supplement of a decidedly bizarre representation of Silvio Berlusconi, which constituted the day's cover for the newspaper. Indeed, as the paper's slavish adoration of the Prime Minister continues to ascend to white-hot intensity, Wednesday's cover presented a fusion of Berlusconi's face and Hans Holbein's painting of Erasmus of Rotterdam. The details of the fatuous parallel that the accompanying article charts is only available to Internet readers via pdf downloads, but anybody unwilling to invest in the time and effort that that involves need only know that it is typical Italian pseudo-intellectual journalese. The following extract from the opening paragraph should render the idea:

"E il Cavaliere zoppicava, eccome se zoppicava. Il ginocchio era immobile (come consequenza della deambulazione incerta), ma tutto il resto era mobilitato, perche il ginocchio, strumento della follia, assomma in se, in quanto strumento pratico della locomozione, tutte le venture del cammino della vita: genu (ginocchio, in ittita), genus, gens, gony (ginocchio, in greco), gignoskein (conoscere), gignesthai (divenire), Knie (ginocchio, in tedesco), kennen (conoscere)."

Which is all very nice, though the article might have added another part of the body, "coglione", which is what Berlusconi called a heckler after leaving a public meeting in Genoa on Wednesday. It is probably indicative of something that Berlusconi's prime ideological cheerleader must resort to this type of abstruse waggishness. The other main channel of Forza Italia propaganda, Il Giornale, will almost certainly maintain its relentless effort on the off chance that some hapless voter will take its title literally and buy the paper.
Though the pro-government papers would have been likely to adopt the aggressive line in any event, the fact that so much of the establishment media (namely, Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, and Sole 24 Ore) has openly favoured the opposition has sharpened the lines of division. Most notably, the editor of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, wrote an editorial before the electoral campaign even began expressing his decision to vote for the centre-left coalition. Sure enough, as the election day approaches, tempers are beginning to fray, as Luciano Violante's outré reflections on Berlusconi's alleged vicinity to the mafia have given rise to vigorous counterattacks.
Il Foglio, therefore, is performing the function of shoring up support, instead of courting it. As the certainty of a centre-left victory becomes ever more evident, the Berlusconi camp appears to investing most of its effort in strengthening Forza Italia's future stake in parliament. Several articles have appeared in the press suggesting the existence of hairline fractures within the the Casa della Liberta' coalition, so eyes are inevitably being pointed towards post-electoral scenarios. So, can we expect another pull-off supplement from Il Foglio? If so, I would suggest that Erasmus is a hint too recherché. What you really need as a role model is an Italian with a well documented knack for communication. So as not strain the Photoshop programme, he should also be balding. Meanwhile, for ideological continuity, he should hate communists and take a vigorous position against media dissidents. I wonder...

Man of Libya

And on another rare venture into the notice-board territory of linking, I see that a young talent in faraway Libya has advertised my existence on his "blog". It is interesting to read about that country, although I hear that they spend the entire period of mass on their knees, unlike the weekly minute that Catholics devote to this practice. It is probably unsafe in this time of cartoon Mohammeds to suggest that this sort of behaviour might be a little foolish, but at least if we Westerners can say that sort of thing, we will do it standing up. Or sitting down perhaps.

Immigrant Readers Needed

And in a note of petulance, I must add that it is hugely ungratifying that while that fool Anthony Manduca, who does not even have O-Levels (I imagine), can gain the attention of 350,000 readers just by writing his cruddy pieces about Italian politics in The Times, I must settle for 16 daily readers as of mignight on Sunday. And half of those are confused Indians pressing the "Next Blog" button.
It all makes me think this whole blogging thing might just be for the vain or the obsessed. To think that an oblique reference to me in an Anthony Licari (God bless him) column constituted the last spike of visits to my site. Where are all these Maltese poseurs and pseudo-intellectuals when you need them to ramp up the value of your google ads? I can only suppose they are prancing around bare Valletta flats pretending to be gay, the wretched cretins that they are. Meanwhile, the Fgura Morlocks, close cousins of the Zabbar lumpen and the Bormla scruffs, are slowly taking over the intellectual space of Malta. When I say intellectual space, I do of course mean the ability to install chip motherboards and such; but you will not be affecting that pained smile when these nerds have hacked into the presidential mainframe. By the mercy of the Virgin Mary, these goons are not yet aware of the fact that they have the future of Malta within their sun-starved, aenemic grasp, but it is only a matter of time. And here I am with a mainly Indian readership.

Striking When the Fire Is Hot

Although most people know Italy as the home of pizzas, pasta, and brigandism, it is a little known fact that it also hosts an extensive range of newspapers. It was in this knowledge, at least, that I ventured into a local petrol station in the hope of buying some of the choice selection. However, as a gnarly-knuckled local informed me, the newspaper journalists of Italy went on strike on Saturday, for reasons that some cynics have attributed to their convenient unwillingness to work over the weekend. Indeed, it is suspicious that when they do strike, it tends to be on weekends, when they manifest their discontent over the particular issue at hand by going on picnics, instead of picketing their own offices on cold, windy Tuesday mornings.
Anyway, it is certainly true that Italian hacks are among the laziest in the world and are rarely enthusiastic about the idea of leaving the confines of their own office space. Yet, in bold blacklegging mode, a newspaper nominally owned by Silvio Berlusconi's brother, Il Giornale, went to the presses, leaving the news-hungry with no choice but to invest in its contents. Now, the name, "The Newspaper", is perhaps overly truistic for some tastes, but it only takes a plunge into its murky depths to realise that there is indeed little newspaperly about it.
But before entering into the merits of one select article from Sunday's edition, some background should be given.
Il Giornale first appeared in 1974 with Indro Montanelli as its editor. Montanelli was, by all accounts, accorded absolute editorial freedom until 1994, the year that Berlusconi threw his hat into the political ring. Once Montanelli had refused to endorse Berlusconi's Citizen Kane-style ascent to political power, it was curtains for him.
Interestingly, another controversial figure took charge at the paper in the period of the lunatic Northern League's unhappy spurt of popularity. Vittorio Feltri, erstwhile editor of L'Indipendente, was and is a journalist whose sensibilities were tuned to the Fox News style of reporting a full decade before that station came to prominence. Under his tenure, the newspaper was perversely turned into a print soapbox for the shrill brand of dementia embodied in promised secessionist, Umberto Bossi. Though Feltri has since moved on to a vastly more offensive publication (Libero, which like In-Nazzjon is sadly unavailable on the Internet), he left his mark on Il Giornale. In fitting with its fundamentally fascist matrix, Il Giornale, whose title even suggests an air of government-approved bulletin over the objective subjectivism of other "red" rags, is little more than agitprop of the most vulgar quality. Anyone interested in knowing what this looks like when written in English should invest (sic) in a biography of Mussolini by Nicholas Farrell, an occasional contributor to Libero and unashamed fascist apologist.
For those interested in what it looks like in Italian should visit Il Giornale itself, whose blacklegging issue featured a standard exemplar of the type of bottomless hypocrisy that informs Italian politics of all hues (though mostly right-wing, at this given moment). It is hard to provide a coherent précis for the soap opera that is Italian politics, but ... some days ago, a violent anti-capitalist protest took place in Milan in which several businesses were vandalised. Predictably, this incident has taken on political qualities, with the right's plangent insistence that the parliamentary left was somehow instrumental in these happenings, as well as the isolated incidents of baby-eating of war-time Ukraine, which the historically minded will recall had then been snatched from the COMMUNIST Russians by the benevolent, and so on so forth.
As veteran observers of the Maltese political scene will also remember, nothing melts as many hearts as grand Walesa-style professions of solidarity(TM). As a result, while one lot is solidarising (this word, that I thought I had fashioned from Romance equivalents, gets 182 google results) with the oppressed Iraqis, some other people are busy doing the same for oppressed Milanese merchants. As a result of the one-upmanship that this sort of political contest involves, Il Giornale's febrile propaganda crew have heaved out this trite bit of electioneering, which rings with sweet irony as Berlusconi recovers from the politically expedient "back pains" exacerbated by his raucous speech at this weekend's Confindustria, Chamber of Commerce to you and me, meeting:

"Quel corteo era sacrosanto, come lo erano le ragioni che lo hanno ispirato. La prima è nel fatto che i commercianti, i quali aprono le vetrine sulla strada, sono i più esposti alla violenza, dalla quale vanno protetti. E hanno imparato che esistono gruppi di teppisti politici i quali hanno come fine quello di turbare la vita delle città: perché questo è il segno della loro esistenza, e di un potere sul territorio da affermare ogni tanto e con ogni mezzo."

Yes indeed readers, Mamma Mia, as the Italians love to say. It looks like democracy is not only under attack from Muslamic Nazimentalists and Blafrican refugistas, but also from the vanguardist wing of the anarchic crypto-democratic-Maoist-Bakuninite phalange led by Romano Prodi, a man whose inspires pity, rather than just inspiring.
On a personal note, I should add that the stroke-like feelings induced by the provocative qualities of Italian journalism are marginally inferior to caused by Maltese newspapers. So it looks like this is still going to be a restful holiday

Desperately Seeking Marmara'

Even here in Italy there is Internet, which means that the citizens of the so-called Belpaese will not have been deprived this sensationally foolish article by Desmond Zammit Marmara'. Because, as is always the case with columns this exasperatingly ridiculous, it is impossible criticise the article rationally and coherently, I have chosen to merely substitute Marmara’s references to teenagers with his own name. The result makes for much more enlightening reading. Though for legal reasons, I should probably add that it makes for enlightening reading that has no absolutely no basis in fact. Probably.

"Criticism of the lifestyle of Desmond Zammit Marmara' has become very common here in Malta. This is rather worrying because most contributions on the issue that appear in the local media usually target the symptoms and not the causes of the problems associated with Desmond Zammit Marmara'.
Desmond Zammit Marmara' is criticized for his iconoclasm, for his violent rejection of authority, for his amoral sexual life, for the way he succumbs to vices such as drink and, even worse, drugs.
Yet, do we stop to reflect on what is causing Desmond Zammit Marmara' to act as he does? Do we stop to reflect on whether Desmond Zammit Marmara' is the victim of the society he has grown up in?
One has to keep in mind that Desmond Zammit Marmara' lives in a globalized world where he is exposed to values and lifestyles which often come into conflict with the traditional values and lifestyles of a formerly insular society such as Malta's.
Through the Internet, films, magazines, foreign travel, or contact with tourists, Desmond Zammit Marmara' is continually bombarded with the message that there are no absolute values and that he should live as he desires without any reference to moral yardsticks as these are in themselves relative and no longer relevant in the times we are living in. A message which is, of course, incorrect, but that is the reality that Desmond Zammit Marmara' lives in!
Take sexual lifestyle as an example. Why are some people scandalized by the sexual lifestyle of Desmond Zammit Marmara'? Have we stopped to think about the way Desmond Zammit Marmara' is bombarded with the message that unfettered sexual activity is perfectly normal and one of the joys of being Desmond Zammit Marmara'? Today, not only films convey this message, we even have magazines distributed with respectable local newspapers read by the whole family which contain advertisements with pictures sometimes bordering on soft porn!
Which is why it is our duty as more mature adults to do something concrete to help Desmond Zammit Marmara' to live a better quality of life. Condemning his lifestyle without doing anything positive to help him is worse than doing nothing!
We need to use the resources available through the media to present alternative, more wholesome lifestyles to Desmond Zammit Marmara'. This can also be done through further developing the personal and social development aspect of education.
Of course, this should not be done in a patronizing manner to show that we, the more mature adults, know better than Desmond Zammit Marmara'. Rather, it should be done in a spirit of solidarity with Desmond Zammit Marmara' because it is our responsibility to provide him with a better future, with models of wholesome lifestyles and not ones which lead to a dead end."

Mamma Mia!

This week, Fool’s Cap is in Italy, which is currently in the throes of an extended electoral campaign. As many people will know, Italy too has newspapers, some of which are not at all bad. Though not according to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owner of the losing finalist in last year’s Champions League, who believes all newspapers, other than the ones he owns himself, to be in collusion with the forces of an international communist plot.
And as in Malta, there is no shortage of sages expounding their opinions on all shades of human endeavour in the papers. Indeed, possession of an opinion and a readiness to wield it seems to provide a livelihood for many Italians who might otherwise resort to a life of organised crime and bag-snatching, as so many of their compatriots have done. And because the country’s media is such a messy gruel of light entertainment, quizzes, improvised strip shows, sensationalism, carpet-bagging salesmanship and low journalism, there is no want of formats for these individuals to nestle themselves within.
Consider the case of one Giampiero Mughini, who most Maltese people will know as the Juventus-supporting boor that regularly crops up on some Sunday football programme or other. With the sense of shamelessness that only the supporter of such an unreconstructedly plutocratic sporting outfit could muster, he routinely bills himself as a polemicist, which is apparently considered in Italy to be a legitimate professional class.
Indeed, while my dictionary informs me that the English word ‘opinionist’ is to considered archaic, the Italian variant is bandied around with careless abandon, as though the practitioners of that dark art were somehow noble descendants of Cato himself. One should be mindful to distinguish the opinionista (a word that sounds uncannily like some Fleet Street neologism) from the columnist, who will in normal countries be relied on to provide a specific tone and style alongside the rash of standard, ill-informed views. In Italy, however, the essence rather than the form of the opinion is paramount, provided it comes from the mouth of a certified opinion-holder.
When the Saturday edition of Il Foglio, a paper owned by none other than Silvio Berlusconi’s wife, indulged in some gentle joshing of its beloved Prime Minister, it was done in a coordinated communion of erstwhile and current Mediaset trough-feeders, from the grotesque Guiliano Ferrara, once of Radio Londra and other similar programs, to Carlo Rossella, formerly head of TG5 and Berlusconi’s once-favoured nominee for the chairmanship of RAI, and Giampiero Mughini, who pockets weekly cheques in the football season for irritating the viewing public. The exercise of soft-pedal satire, at which the Italians are so adept, was designed effectively to convey the impression of an affable aptitude for self-mockery, which Berlusconi indulges in so frequently. Mercifully, most Italians recognise this oleaginous sycophancy for what it is, and will hopefully act accordingly on the given day.
But the opinionist does not need to be instrumentalised (another charmingly non-English Italianism) to become contemptible. In a way, the readers and correspondents of Italian newspapers are complicit in the Brahminisation of the columnist. In the Italian version of The Times, Il Corriere della Sera, a letters page editor sits in attendance awaiting the calls of counsel of his salivating readership. Though the requests of illumination from up on high, in this paper’s case from the patrician Sergio Romano, normally relate to current affairs, this need not necessarily the case. His long-standing predecessor Indro Montanelli, who left the post for reasons of death, was quite able to field questions about historical matters ranging as far back as the Napoleonic Wars, as he was in fact 250 years old and had been reporting conflict since the Battle of Austerlitz. Romano’s style, on the other hand, comes across as more schoolmasterly, and it is with its accordingly avuncular superciliousness that one Saturday, he answered a request for information about Cardinal Richlieu that sounded as though it had been written by a student preparing a school project. The letter:

“Mi piacerebbe leggere un suo «ritratto» di Armand-Jean Du Plessis, meglio noto come il cardinale Richelieu.
La sua azione politica, oltre alla sua leggendaria capacità, è fonte per me di grande ammirazione.

Lorenzo Trabalza”

Si, Romano! Tell-a-me everything! Romano tell you, you no worry…

Caro Trabalza,
debbo supporre che lei non sia stato, negli anni della sua adolescenza, un accanito lettore di Alexandre Dumas. Per i ragazzi che sono cresciuti divorando «I tre moschettieri» e «Vent’anni dopo», Richelieu è un prelato intrigante e maligno, continuamente intento a fabbricare trame e complotti contro le nobili figure del re e della regina… [and on and on, he continues in this vein]”

Which all probably proves a version of the adage; readers get the newspapers they deserve.