Oh dear, what an oxxata (sorry, couldn't resist that)
Disclaimer: this is not Toni Abela
Some weeks ago, I posted a piece on this blog saying how ridiculous and misguided Joseph Muscat and his deputy leaders were to go down to the shipyard to listen to Sammy Meilaq rant like a maniac about taking to the streets and hammering at the door to the Auberge de Castille. And all this while he was trying to sound business-like with talk of appointing a CEO. SEE-EE-OH, I wrote – more like an OH-EX-EX.
Even though the remark was about Joseph Muscat, deputy leader Toni ‘Otello’ Abela went nuts. People had already registered the joke and in some circles Joseph il-Poodle had become Joseph L-Oxx. So what did the super-smart political strategist Toni Otello do? He brought it to a much wider audience than this blog has, by writing an outraged opinion piece for L-orizzont, going into great detail about how I called his magnificent leader a ‘genitali ta’ mara’, and how the magnificent leader was refusing to sue me. That’s probably because the magnificent leader has more brains than Toni: he can foresee the consequences of a newspaper story in which it is reported that the Labour leader is suing Daphne Caruana Galizia for calling him a vagina. Or of standing up in court and explaining why he feels libelled for being called a vagina, possibly bringing in as a witness his friend Mark Sant the gynaecologist, to confirm that he has examined him carefully and no, he isn’t a vagina.
But Otello knows better. He wrote that if Muscat doesn’t sue me, he will. Apparently, he felt he had been called a vagina by association – hmmmm, how does that work? – and that he has grounds.
You can guess what happened next. The electronic version of Otello’s L-orizzont article began doing the rounds, to the sound of hysterical laughter. Then Malta Today picked up the story and splashed it on the front page on Sunday, bringing it to an entirely fresh audience that doesn’t read L-orizzont and is not in email circles. That did it. A collective giggle went up – have you heard the one about the OXX? Toni is going to sue Daphne for calling him an OXX. Cue more hysterical laughter.
Malta Today asked Otello whether he was going to deliver on his threat to sue. He painted himself into a corner by saying that he would. Because I live in a house with a gate, no doorbell and a Neapolitan mastiff and a Staffordshire bull terrier that don’t take kindly to arms being poked through into their territory, I haven’t been notified of Otello’s libel suit. But a couple of hours ago my editor kindly emailed me the press release which Otello sent out to the media today:
Libell prezentat illum 19 ta’ Settembru mill-Avukat Dr. Toni Abela kontra Daphne Caruana Galizia
L-Avukat Dr. Toni Abela llum prezenta kawza ta’ libell kontra Daphne Caruana Galizia fejn fiha talab lill-Qorti tikkundanna lil Caruana Galizia thallsu dik is-somma li tigi stabbilita mill-Qorti, wara li permezz ta’ l-artikolu pubblikat u mxandar fuq is-sit elettroniku www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com, fit-12 t’Awwissu 2008, l-istess Caruana Galizia ghamlet imputazzjonijiet u addebiti fil-konfront ta’ l-attur li huma ghal kollox libelluzi u dan peress li huma malafamanti u intizi li jtellfu jew inaqqsu mir-reputazzjoni ta’ l-istess Dr. Toni Abela, u dana ai termini ta’ dak li tipprovdi l-ligi ta’ l-istampa, Kap. 248 tal-Ligijiet ta’ Malta. L-artikolu li deher fil-website www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com qieghed jintbaghat separatament bhala dokument anness ma’ din l-e-mail.Napprezza jekk tippubblika l-informazzjoni t’hawn fuq fil-gurnal tieghek.
Inselli ghalik,
Av. Toni Abela
So as you can see, he wants even more coverage of the fact that he thinks I called him a vagina, and he thinks it’s libellous. But hey, hang on a minute. He attached a copy of the ‘libellous piece’ to his press release, and it isn’t the OXX one. I read it carefully to pinpoint the magic word and then realised that it’s another blog-post altogether. No vaginas there at all. I combed through every line of the post Otello is suing me for, and couldn’t find a single word or phrase that is libellous in anyone’s regard, let alone his. It is entirely innocuous.
So I have to reach either one of two conclusions. Toni Abela copied and pasted the wrong blog-post because he’s only just got used to these new-fangled computer things. Or he has been persuaded of the wisdom of not suing me for allegedly implying that he is a vagina by association, because it would turn into a great, big national joke. Yet he still felt that he had to deliver on his threat and so picked at random another blog-post in which his name appears, and in which I am vaguely rude about him, and used that instead. Either way, he really is a two-horned ox.
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Hahaha, I heard about the OXX thing. The way people described it to me really seemed that Daphne insinuated Muscat was an “OXX”.
The way they were exaggerating it really made me laugh. (“Ghax Joey mhux tà dawn l-affarijiet tà. Immissa tisthi DIN” Ma nafx kif ma jtellahiex il-qorti.) Anyway, I thought there was something eerie about it, as DCG couldn’t get to such a level.
Thus, I had to verify it for myself. After doing so, I seriously had to ponder whether those people saying “what Daphne had the courage to say” were really to be defined as an OXX, but in the Maltese literal meaning of the word!! I mean, some people just repeat what they are told!
Can’t understand why Abela had to get into this… I guess he wants some more media coverage. Lately, apparently, all those wanting media coverage need to say that they have been ridiculed by Daphne, in some way or another. They should pay you for that Daphne, not sue you!
Never a dull moment
Yeah, it must be quite hectic to be Daphne I guess, never a quiet moment. LOL… I wonder how many times she’d been sued so far, (she must have some record) for such pathetic reasons to make things worse.
You can hear them on the news ‘ghax Daphne tiela u Daphne niezla’ (hope that I spelt it correctly) ‘Cause he sued her and he is still going to it, and bla bla bla. At least when someone sues her for such a reason it gets really funny, I really would like to see them in front of the judge!
Daphne, you make my day….every day! hahahahahaha
What a fool, I didn’t know he was an oxx before I heard it on Xfm News.
Yes, Yes, Bad Pr is still Pr, but I didn’t touch Cow meat for a long time after I heard about the Mad Cow Disease.
Its hilarious though that someone actually told every single Maltese, that he was called an Oxx by association. That would mean hes part of an Oxx or at least somewhere close to it, that’s full of >_<.
Good luck Daphne dear, you are going to need it.
Just read your comment of 12 August and Toni Abela seems to have got you there.
[Daphne – Luck has nothing to do with it.}
DCG – would you put up the link so a jury of your peers can assess the libellousness of it?
[Daphne – Here it is.
Ajma, x’biza – another earthquake warning, hej
Joseph Muscat gave another ‘earthquake warning’ in his usual column in The Times, yesterday. He’s unhappy with the party system that elects clowns, idiots and incompetents to key roles – except where he is concerned, of course. The people who elected Toni Abela, Anglu Farrugia and Jason Micallef also elected him, but he obviously fails to see the connection and that he’s part of the joke. In his own way, he is as crassly incompetent as the rest of them.
Part of this incompetence was maintaining a personal friendship with Jason Micallef, being seen out and about with him, and being closely associated with him in his own leadership campaign. The net result was that delegates thought Jason was Joseph’s man. If Muscat really did not want him, he should have signalled this fact as strongly as possible. It wouldn’t have been a matter of ‘imposing’ on others, as he wrote in his piece. It would have been sound political strategy, and that sort of thing is necessary when you are the leader of one of the two main parties. If you’re a wimp, go and play games with children.
So now Muscat has told us that he has a cunning plan. He is going to give the Labour Party a chief executive officer, once the summer holidays are over and they’ve all removed their swimming-trunks and got back into their hideous baggy suits that are too long in the arm and leg. (And by then, too, they might have realised that very wide ties with big chunky knots in them are right out of style, especially when worn with those dreadful French collars that make them look as though their heads are sitting directly on their shoulders without the benefit of a neck.) That way, he will circumvent the rules and regulations of the party hierarchy, kick Jason Micallef sideways, hopefully without damaging his teeth, his hairstyle, or his white trousers, and Labour will have a boss.
I bet you’ve already noticed the hole in this plan. The CEO of an organisation is the real, actual executive boss. So where does that leave Joseph Muscat – as non-executive chairman? It was bound to happen, of course. Joseph Muscat, like his pale, bearded mentor Mario Vella and his other mentor Alfred Sant, is obsessed with corporate structures and Biznizzz-speak. The fact that of all three, not one of them has ever lived the corporate life or knows how to run a business, seems not to matter. L-aqwa li nitkellmu bhal tal-biznizz.
The more I see of the goings-on at Labour, the more it looks like a dark comedy. I’m off to the beach now, laughing all the way at the thought of Labour and its SEE-EEE-OH. All those cooks and no broth to spoil: a party leader, a separate leader of the opposition, two deputy leaders, a secretary-general, an executive committee, an international secretary pulled out of the archives and dusted down….and now, a SEE-EEE-OH. Oh, brother.
Is all of this a way of getting round having to actually lead, take decisions and take on responsibility for those decisions? Is Joseph Muscat too scared to stand up and be counted? Look at the Nationalisty Party: its leadership had just two faces in the last election, Lawrence Gonzi and Joe Saliba, and that made for clarity. When pseudo-leaders insist on surrounding themselves with committees and deputies and now even a CEO onto whom blame and responsibility can be dumped, it’s because they are incapable of leading. They are in the wrong job.
My main point before Joseph Muscat’s election was that he is the wrong person because he does not have the psychological make-up or personality of a leader. He is a natural follower, yes-man and people-pleaser, and this kind of person is mentally incapable of leading. You can’t makie a leader. Leaders are born, not bred. You can see in the school playground which children are leaders and which are followers. Anyone who wants everyone to love and like him all the time, and who is too scared to take decisions that might upset others, is a follower.
Look at what Muscat is doing now. He is presenting his decision to have a SEE-EE-OH as an act of decisive bravery. “The time for change has come. If anything, last week’s elections hastened it,” he wrote. But really, it is precisely the opposite. An act of decisive bravery would have been to eliminate Jason Micallef from the race, even if it meant putting up with his catty insults and drama-queen behaviour for the next five years. Appointing a CEO to carry the bulk of what should be your decision-making responsibilities is, however, the act of a coward and of a person who is wholly unqualified to lead.
Joseph Muscat has no leadership qualities. I stand by what I wrote repeatedly before he was elected to the post. With every passing week, there is more proof of this. His personality is absolutely not that of a leader. In a business organisation, he would never have made it beyond middle management.
MLP politicians have long had a knack of embarrassing themselves – must be a tradition.
In 1978, I was in the Parliament Strangers’ Gallery with a friend of mine who at one point remarked that a certain Minister of Agriculture, now deceased, was behaving like a clown (buffu), screaming and jumping up and down. He was overheard by the minister’s driver who called a policeman and, for some reason, reported me instead.
I was arrested there and then, accused of breach of privilege and a few days later hauled before the House. The proceeding was transmitted on what was at that time Radio Malta so the entire country – those who bothered listening – heard Parliament spend about three hours discussing whether the minister was a buffu and whether he had been described as a buffu during the sitting or while there was a suspension (in those times, parliamentary sittings were regularly suspended because of uproar). There were speeches by MPs who sought to define the word buffu, others discussed whether buffu referred to the minister as a person or as a politician, etc.
MPs could also question me but the procedure was that they had to address the Speaker who would then ask me the question himself. Unfortunately the elderly Speaker, a retired pharmacist, was a little hard of hearing so the MPs often had to repeat their questions such as “What did you mean when you said Minister X was a buffu?”, “Did you call Minister X buffu before or during the suspension?”. Each question would then be repeated yet again by the Speaker.
As a result, a casual remark that had been overheard by only one person was broadcast to the whole country; the word buffu was bandied around all evening, usually in the same sentence as the minister’s name.
At the end of the session Parliament took a vote and I was found guilty of having breached the privilege of the minister. The Speaker said that, as it was now late, the House had to adjourn and I would be called later for sentencing but it was never put on the parliamentary agenda again.
[Daphne – Dammit, Antoine! What a shame you didn’t call him an oxx! Imagine how much more entertaining it would have made the whole thing.]
Would you believe that the Nationalist Administration at one point had offered Toni Abela a judgeship?
[Daphne – Tell me more….a magistrate, maybe, but a judge?]
Dear Desdemona , we’ll meet at Philipi , if know what that means!!!
Your Otello (Toni Abela).
[Daphne – I can’t believe those chicken-brained delegates voted you in as deputy leader of the Labour Party. They’re insane and you are a perambulating embarrassment to your party. I can’t imagine any deputy leader of the Nationalist Party ever posting a painfully cringe-making comment like this one, quite apart from all the other foolish displays on your blog and on your Super One shows. As for this Desdemona/Otello business, I’ve always harboured the suspicion that you’re less than secretly infatuated, with all those references you used to make to my legs and various other parts of my body in your stupid L-orizzont articles, but if this is your perverse way of dealing with it – like those boys in the schoolyard who pulls the pigtails of the girls they fancy while being unable to handle it – then it’s about time you grew up. You’re in your 50s, aren’t you? Get to grips with the fact that I don’t find you even remotely attractive and never have done.]
I hate to be pedantic (and I beg your forgiveness) but, unless you want to use c**t which is probably the closest translation of oxx, I think the correct anatomical term should be “vulva” and not “vagina”…
[Daphne – I love it. Toni Abela is not a vulva. He’ll probably think it’s the Swedish car marque.]
Are we going to have trials by jury here instead of in court?
[Daphne – Excuse me?]
Legal Question: Can anybody in Malta sue over an article in a blog? A blog is not a newspaper which is physically printed and distributed in a country.
In the US and also the UK, the bloggers are more forthright in their language, and I never heard of any suing.
[Daphne – This is the Malta Labour Party we’re talking about, sweetheart. They haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that people can say what they like as long as it isn’t a lie..]
@Daphne: In that case, change marque to Bugatti, nobody would mind that, I suspect…
Thanks for re-publishing. What did Toni Abela find libellous in that? Since he clearly reads this, could he enlighten us?
Not to be pedantic but OXX should start with GĦ …this is oh so entertaining. I can’t believe people are rushing to the law courts to sue for libel because of a blog, of all things!
What’s next, we’ll be sued for libel for what we say at the manicurist’s about Joseph Muscat looking like a schoolboy in a suit? And whilst on JM’s garb, have you seen the blue shirt with a white collar he was wearing at the party thrown in his honour on Friday night in some obscure party club? Absolutely hideous – does he know those shirts are usually used in Mob movies? To say nothing of the tie which was totally mismatched!
@Andrew Borg Cardona: I think he pasted the wrong blog entry. Now if that’s not the doing of an O-X-X I don’t know what is :) That would furnish enough proof in Court that he is indeed one :) As our press law lecturer used to say: it would constitute the “prova tal-verita’ tal-fatti” :) and the suit dismissed without further ado :):)
[Daphne – I know it starts with gh but spelling it without allows me lots of leeway with pictures of the two-horned variety.]
Yet again, you write another shocking title for your blog.
[Daphne – If it shocks you, darling, don’t look.]
Daphne, yes, I know – I loved that ox picture :)
Given the fate of Desdemona at the hands of Othello, could Dr Abela’s post be interpreted as a veiled threat?
[Daphne – Do you for one moment imagine that he knows what the play is about?]
@ Daphne – re judgeship.
There’s nothing much to say. The position offered was indeed a judge. Seems the Administration was in dire straits. Can’t comment whether he would have been a good judge, but apparently he turned the offer down.
[Daphne – Which administration? The one that appointed Myriam Hayman a magistrate, or the other one that appointed Noel Arrigo a judge and then chief justice?]
Toni Abela,
Please clear up for me what Phillipi (please note the double l) has to do with Othello?
You do know that the battle of Phillipi was part of the play Julius Caesar and nothing at all to do with the play Othello, don’t you?
[Daphne – How would he know? He reads L-orizzont, for heaven’s sake.]
“How would he know? He reads L-orizzont, for heaven’s sake.”
True .. but still – Phillipi in Othello!!!!!
@ Daphne – re judgeship.
I’m afraid I’m guilty of slandering the Nationalist administration. A contact of mine tells me the proposed appointment was during the Sant administration. I’m afraid I had forgotten the 22-month hiatus between Nationalist administrations. My apologies.