Amazing

Published: November 5, 2008 at 7:58am

I want to spend all day watching the coverage on television, but duty calls and as bad luck would have it, today’s programme involves going from one thing to another far away from a television set. Sarah Palin is going to run for president in 2012? I can’t wait. Of course, now that she’s tasted the big time, it’s going to be tough going back to Alaska and a household full of problems.




32 Comments Comment

  1. me says:

    I would imagine a race between Sarah and Hilary……

  2. Amanda Mallia says:

    me – … and no doubt who will win that one then

  3. Ivan Falzon says:

    Apparently, Mr Vincenti used to live in Colorado, or some relative of his

    Colorado Amendment 48:
    Human Life from Moment of ConceptionColorado Amendment 48:
    Human Life from Moment of Conception
    Full results »3:22 a.m. EST, Nov 5 ’08
    County Results |
    No 1,379,595 73%
    Yes 506,724 27%
    78% of precincts reporting

    [Daphne – No, you’re wrong there. It’s the usual Maltese Chinese whispers. One of his sisters, who happens to be a long-time friend of mine, was once married to an American marine.]

  4. Mario P says:

    Once a Russian politician described US elections as two boxers fighting for the same side – i.e. the winner will still be a capitalist. However this time I think there will be a real change – and this change may not be to the liking of some. There will be a lot of pressure for quick wins on the home front and international scene ( and the latter means a quick withdrawal from Iraq or at least more shared involvement from the allies). My concern is that the USA will withdraw from the international forums and look more to solving its internal problems – always a perennial problem with the same inevitable result – that the many trigger happy tyrants around feel that they have a free hand to do what they want. The chaos that then ensues inevitably draws in the US again to clean up the mess as apparently no-one else is capable of doing so. Yugoslavia was not so long ago to make people forget when the US is not around to act as a policeman. To turn around a favourite American saying: we don’t particularly like these bastards but they are ‘our’ bastards.

  5. Shannon Andrews says:

    So our “Prime Minister in waiting” wrote to Barack Obama to congratulate him on his historical victory as if he was already the Prime Minister of Malta. I wouldn’t put it past his massive ego to try compare his polital career with that of Mr. Obama especially the way he has worded the last paragraph.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081105/local/joseph-muscat-writes-to-obama

  6. Edward Fenech says:

    How can someone like you who supported conservatives like Tonio Borg, Jason Azzopardi and Lawrence Gonzi celebrate Obama’s win? Beats me?

    [Daphne – Edward, as any who reads my column knows, I do not support Tonio Borg. And I have written about Jason Azzopardi only once – unfavourably. I support Lawrence Gonzi because he espouses precisely the same values Obama does. You can’t see that because you cannot find it in you to look beyond religion. To compare Gonzi with Palin purely on the basis of religious values is patently ridiculous – just as it is ridiculous to compare Muscat to Obama or to call the Malta Labour Party left-wing and progressive, when it is xenophobic and arch-conservative. To you, the word ‘conservative’ appears to be just a label, not a factual description. The conservatives in Malta are the ones carrying the red flag – except, of course, that they don’t inspire business confidence.]

  7. Lawrence says:

    That Ms Sarah Palin was underqualified for the vice presidential race is an understatement. To mention that Senator McCain’s judgement was put in serious question by most moderates and by none other than Colin Powell is also correct. But somehow the most scathing remarks towards such women are most times passed by women rather than the stereotype male.

  8. jim says:

    I’m sure Mr Obama was waiting for this letter. If the letter was sent as email, it will be treated as spam, else it would go to the recycling waste.

    http://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081105/local/joseph-muscat-writes-to-obama

  9. Arnold Galea says:

    Hi Daphne

    I want to use your blog to share my views on the election of Barack Obama. Today is a great day in World History and personally, I am very happy that such a person has managed to become US president.

    This is the America that all dream of, an America that leads the way for a prosperous & peaceful world. I do not normally praise politicians so much but these type of politicians can make a very positive impact on all human beings. It is incredible how Obama inspired people from all over the world & have once again given hope to all of us for a new era a “New Beginning”. I might be too impressed but I am happy about this important change. Let us hope that Obama does indeed change America & the world. We are living in exciting times.

  10. Amanda Mallia says:

    Come on, Daph! We’re dying to hear what you have got to say about this:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081105/local/joseph-muscat-writes-to-obama

    Here’s a choice quote from it which has been doing the rounds by email:

    “Your election is welcome news for all those who believe that everyone, irrespective of social or economic background, should have the opportunity to succeed in one’s life.”

    I’ll just wait for the comments to flow …

  11. Meerkat :) says:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081105/local/joseph-muscat-writes-to-obama

    I guess he wrote:

    “My wife she called like your wife…wanna be my friend?”

    with a red crayon given to him by mummy…

  12. Edward Fenech says:

    Can’t see the difference. Palin is to McCain, what Tonio Borg is to Gonzi – his deputy. Tonio is Gonzi’s deputy. You still supported Gonzi despite Tonio. Equating Gonzi to Obama is just not on. Obama favours divorce, abortion and gay civil unions. Gonzi favours neither.

    [Daphne – It’s the spirit and outlook of political parties that count, and in spirit and outllook, the Nationalist Party equates with the Democrats and the Labour Party with the Republicans. Please tell me where you heard the news that the Labour Party favours divorce, abortion and gay civil unions – it’s new to me. Muscat did say he is in favour of divorce, but apparently it’s just a personal opinion. He classifies it as a civil right, yet insists that MPs should be given a free vote. Imagine that – a free vote on a civil right. That’s like a bill for the ending of racial segregation coming before parliament and Muscat giving his MPs a free vote according to their conscience. A black person’s right to sit next to a white person on a bus is a civil right, too.]

  13. Uncle Fester says:

    @Daphne. “the Nationalist Party equates with the Democrats and the Labour Party with the Republicans”.

    What have you been drinking? Either that or you are delusional or suffering from some extreme form of post traumatic stress disorder that has clouded your judgment.

    The Democratic Party is a left of center/progressive party supported by the trade union movement, feminists and progressive intellectuals, blue collar workers and minority groups such as African Americans, Jewish Americans and Hispanics. And that sounds like the P.N. to you?

    The Republicans are supported by big business, the evangelical base that adored Palin and the Roman Catholic church’s hierarcy, the country club set (American equivalent of tal-pepe) and is overwhelmingly supported by non-ethnic white Americans. And that reminds you of the M.L.P.?

    Has Malta changed that much?

    [Daphne – Yes, Uncle Fester, it has. You’ve been away for the last 25-odd years, so your information on Maltese politics is completely out of date. The Labour Party is now Malta’s right-wing, arch-conservative, xenophobic party – and though its new leader claims to have different views, he is sitting on an inward-looking, near-sighted mammoth that is exactly the same as it was the day he was elected. Malta’s progressive party in the last 32 years has been the Nationalist Party, which is why Malta has surged forward in the last 20 years and become completely unrecognisable from the quagmire that forced you to leave the island and emigrate in search of an education, never to return.

    It was Malta’s progressive party that marched this broken island down the long, hard road to the European Union, and it was Malta’s repressive, arch-conservative and xenophobic party that fought EU membership all the way, even refusing to accept the unequivocal result of the referendum.

    Some trade unions support the Nationalist Party, others support the Labour Party. The GWU is not Malta’s only union, and the GRTU may have a Labour-leaning leadership, but its members have always veered towards the Nationalist Party except in the election of 1996, when they opposed VAT. They swung right back again 22 months later.

    The Labour Party thinks it has the support of intellectuals; in reality, what it has is the support of a few intellectuals from Labour families whose political views are ingrained by their upbringing, rather than having been arrived at through a process of rational analysis (like mine), and a great mass of illiterates, sub-literates, semi-literates and people who can’t string a thought or sentence together.

    The vast majority of those in socio-economic groups C2 and DE (Malta’s rednecks, in other words) vote Labour. In America, rednecks vote Republican. The Republicans even had a redneck running for vice-president. The real intellectuals – in other words, the people who have a strong educational background and good powers of analysis – vote Nationalist. The difference is that, unlike Labour’s intellectuals – Mary Darmanin, Mario Vella e bella compania – we don’t go around thinking of ourselves as intellectuals or having ourselves described as such. The very word is repulsive, conjuring up as it does a bunch of people beginning with W who haven’t done a day’s productive work in their lives.

    Blue-collar workers may vote Democrat, but so do East Coast socialites, people in fashion, the media, advertising, communications, and film – none of whom would be caught dead associating with the likes of Sarah Palin.

    Big business in Malta supports both parties and pays protection money to both. There is no such thing as a Labour donor in Malta because there are only bi-party donors, or those who don’t donate at all. Had AD the slightest chance of winning, they would set aside funds for AD too. This is the Mediterranean.

    The only minority group in Malta is that of African immigrants, and they don’t have a vote. But I have to let you know that the only MPs to speak in racist terms in the House were on the Opposition benches, and the most racist coverage of their presence here has been in the Labour-leaning newspapers.

    Attitudes towards religion in Malta are not split according to party lines but according to age and social background. You may be surprised to discover that those most fervently against divorce are teenagers of whatever political stripe, while those who think that divorce should be introduced and that religious views should not be imposed on others come mainly from my social background and we tend to vote Nationalist. The reason is not that we are naturally irreligious, but because it requires an exercise in abstract but rational thought to make the mental leap beyond ‘my religion says divorce is bad, therefore no one should divorce whatever their religion’ and ‘Malta is a Catholic country, therefore there should be no divorce.’ People who think illogically generally vote Labour, not Nationalist. Of course, there are many exceptions, but only just enough to prove the rule.

    For a lawyer, you considerably lack clarity of thought. And I see you haven’t yet shrugged off that chip which makes you so antagonistic in my regard, for all the world as though I am the one responsible for whatever might be eating you up.]

  14. Edward Fenech says:

    You may want to remember that I was active in AD. The only party that favoured divorce and gay civil unions. You choose to bitch us for years, just because we represented a threat to your beloved Nats. Daphne you work for the Conservatives (PN) but want the liberal badge. What do you call that?

    [Daphne – The Nationalist Party is anything but conservative. For that, look towards the red flag. The fact that a bunch of people with a problem chose to stick a label on their forehead saying ‘liberal’ does not make me want to rush to join them. My family’s political background is liberal, or the nearest approximation that Malta came to that, and most people of this persuasion switched to voting PN, turning it liberal from the inside. Even you have to concede that it is far removed from what it was. The trouble with people like you and Harry is that you made the mistake of thinking that it made more sense to work for change from the outside, which is tantamount to trying to erode a bastion with a blade, rather than joining the Nationalist Party, seeing it as a means to an end, and working for change from within. Anti-PN sentiment, however, must have been what stood in your way.]

  15. LONDON AREA says:

    @ JM “Your election is welcome news for all those who believe that everyone, irrespective of social or economic background, should have the opportunity to succeed in one’s life.”
    This is rich coming from JM seeing his party’s right-wing views regarding economic migration towards Malta from Africa.

  16. Antoine Vella says:

    I wonder if Joseph Muscat addressed Obama as Barack in his letter.

    I’ve only seen bits of this letter as published by The Times (strangely, couldn’t find the integral text on maltastar) but I thought it was typical that, apparently, Joseph Muscat did not write as Leader of the Opposition or on behalf of the MLP but in his own name.

    [Daphne – One for the dustbin or the shredder. Il-vera ta’ minn wara l-muntanji.]

  17. Uncle Fester says:

    @Daphne. Cogent analysis of Maltese society as you see it in the early 21st century – sad parting shot though. I lack clarity of thought – how so? Because you think that I don’t see things the way you do? And nothing is eating me up in your regards or in regards to anyone – as I have often said and you have recently confirmed – we wouldn’t know each other if we fell over each other. What is this with Amanda Mallia and yourself – I was first called tal-lejber (which I found hilarious), then I think I was some French lecturer at University, then some doctor, now I have it in for you?

    The thing that really strikes me about the contributions to your website (both by you and others) is the level of acrimony between people and the less than civil tone that people employ in their discourse. It’s an us vs.them, black and white, with us or against us, no gray – so like the Malta I remember growing up in. That’s why I find it hard to believe that the mentality has changed as much as you make out. Your description of Maltese society as being so heterogenous doesn’t square with what I read on your blog.

    For heaven’s sake the only reason I can even relate to this blog is that many contributors seem to be caught in a time warp. It’s as if I step into Malta circa 1981 every time I log in. Mintoff and Old Labour are out there just waiting to snuff out democracy – forget the fact that the PN has been in government for 20 years, Mintoff is a barmy 92 year old and Malta is a prosperous member of the EU thanks to the PN. Yet to many people on this website, it’s as if these irreversible achievements risked annihilation by Labour tomorrow.

    [Daphne – Amanda is one of my sisters. May I suggest that if you don’t wish to have others behave acrimoniously towards you, it’s a good idea not to behave acrimoniously towards them. The fact that Malta has changed enormously since 1983 does not mean it has become heterogenous. I neither said nor implied that. I actually said the opposite: that it is NOT heterogenous. That’s what I mean by clarity of thought. The real reason you can relate to this blog is that you’re just a year younger than I am and, from the hints you give out, come from a roughly similar background. Despite not knowing the identities of people commenting here, I get the sense that there is a preponderance of people in their early 40s who grew up in Malta. The common factor? Unfinished business. It’s impossible to achieve closure when every day in the news you see the faces of the politicians who disrupted your formative years, and hear them revving up for power again. Prosperity is NOT an irreversible achievement. You might as well ask why a black man who grew up in South Carolina in the 1950s doesn’t vote for a politician who used to be a member of the Klan, on the grounds that he isn’t a member of the Klan anymore.

    You live in America, don’t you? Well, I was out all day and missed the rolling coverage, but in the couple of hours I fitted in before leaving the house in the morning and after getting back this evening I noticed a key theme in the broadcasts relayed from your part of the world: ‘the bigotry of our past’, ‘the cruelty that divided us’, the history of the civil rights movement, the pain and suffering of black people all the way from slavery to Martin Luther King. And not one person stood up to bleat, like a couple of whining Maltese columnists I could mention, “Come on people, why are you talking about this? It’s SOOOOOOO over.” On the contrary, what a former governor of Virginia said was this: it’s never over. It’s always there.]

  18. Matthew says:

    Antoine:

    The full text is here. Read it and weep.

  19. Corinne Vella says:

    Antoine Vella: Well, the Times headline did say “Joseph Muscat writes to Obama”, rather than “Malta’s Opposition Leader congratulates US President Elect”.

  20. Ronnie says:

    @ Daphne – Nationalist Party is anything but conservative? Then what do you call a party that still refuses to legislate for divorce?

    [Daphne – A party that sits on the fence until it is sure of the electoral consequences, like that other party led by Joseph Muscat.]

  21. Drew says:

    Both the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party are to the left of the Democratic party on economic issues – in fact both parties would undoubtedly be labelled “socialist” if they had to contest the US elections. With regards to the civil liberties issue, both Maltese parties are more authoritarian and moralistic than the Republican party, let alone the Democratic party.

  22. Amanda Mallia says:

    Edward Fenech – You’re being one hell of a sourpuss today. It must be the drab weather in England, which must take some getting used to!

  23. Edward Fenech says:

    My God you live in your own illusion Mrs DCG!

    You claim that you work from within the PN to change it. But think for one moment – what have you changed? The PN today is socially more consrvative than the PN under GBO. It is run by the ex chair of the Catholic action and counts amongst its senior ranks Catholic Action people, Legion of Mary toy soldiers and even Opus Dei members. Remember how they rushed to sign the GOL petition, or have you now convenienty forgot? What has changed?

    Then you pretend to be scandalised by the appointment of Sarah Palin. Look at you PN mates. Take a good look around you and stop dreaming that you are the champion of Malta’s liberal party. You are an apologist for the church-driven christian democrats.That you consider the PN better than Josie and his fake-socialists is not the issue. The issue is that thouands of educated intelligent people like you settled for the mediocre. I chose not to.

    Sahha!

    You are a first class writer, but quite a mediocre debater.

    [Daphne – And you are a hopeless politician, a terrible writer and have the mind of an accountant. Now stick to settling down in England. Nick Clegg might need a hand. As for the rest of your silly bitching – are you trying to tell me that I should discriminate against politicians on the basis of their religion? Insisting that I shouldn’t vote for a Catholic because I am not one myself is like saying I shouldn’t vote for a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu because of their religious beliefs. Imagine that. Gullible idiots on both sides of the house signed Paul Vincenti’s petition. I would imagine that some of AD’s people did, too. In fact, I clearly remember your propaganda secretary Claire Bonello championing their cause in one of her articles. You chose not to settle for the mediocre? On the contrary, Edward – you settled for the most mediocre party of all. At least Josie Muscat has entertainment value. Harry, who was last seen smiling circa 1975, went out with a bang: demanding a presidential pardon after 20 years of playing Moral Mary. Your AD project having failed, you sulked and left the country. Ar’hemm hej. Elvis has left the building.]

  24. Uncle Fester says:

    @Daphne. You are “darn right” (to use a Palinism) about people being attracted to your site being in our age group -I am 43 and like you lived through those terrible years after the 1981 elections. I remember my father saying on that fateful December 12, 1981 after he had voted – “your entire future hangs in the balance.” And sure enough it did. The future of our entire generation. I spent my entire 20s wondering what would have happened if… I haven’t done that for years. I have been wondering why people on this website have spent their whole lives doing so. Maybe the answer is that in some cases their lives were destroyed and not simply altered. However, the changes made after 1987 and especially EU membership, were not just increased prosperity but entrenching democracy and human rights into national culture. Those changes are irreversible. Prosperity comes and goes. When Alfred Sant was elected in 1996 there was no threat to democracy and he relinquished power as readily as he assumed it – that was before EU membership. So it will be when the baton is handed over the next time – whenever that will be. Those are the changes I was referring to. On a more personal note, I did not know that Amanda Mallia was your sister just as I did not know that Corinne Vella was your sister until you mentioned it.

    P.S. As to my part of the world – although I live in the South, South Florida is pretty much New York with Palm Trees at least since the 60s. Eclectic mix of conservative Cubans, liberal Jews, blacks, Italians and some redneck holdouts. The place was more Southern in the 60s and 70s. One of my friends here is an African American woman in her 60s. When she was a young girl she was actually arrested for being on the beach while tending two white girls as a nanny. It was a crime for a black person to be on the beach with a white person. She remembers having to have a special pass to get on to the beach – blacks (or negroes as they were called then) weren’t allowed on the beach after dark. Last night was an emotional night for her and all African Americans. I work as a Plaintiff’s lawyer and still see the vestiges of discrimination which are alive and well. Hopefully Obama’s win will be a major nail in the coffin of discrimination.

  25. Uncle Fester says:

    Can you believe we almost elected this moron as Vice-President of the U.S.?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwzgF0s3Dzg

  26. Corinne Vella says:

    Uncle Fester: Your friend’s experience was some 40 years back, yet Obama’s election only last night still made her feel emotional. It’ll take more than 20 years of cultural entrenchment of human rights and democratic thinking to wipe out how people here (and I mean Malta, not just this site) still feel.

  27. Sybil says:

    “Amanda Mallia Wednesday, 5 November 2227hrs
    Edward Fenech – You’re being one hell of a sourpuss today. It must be the drab weather in England, which must take some getting used to!”

    More like he must be suffering from the after-effects of too much toad in the hole. :)

  28. Uncle Fester says:

    @Corinne Vella. And some will never get over it just like the suldati tal-azzar of the 60s. Some wounds never heal. Has any enlightened person out there got a clue as to why Mintoff’s government that did so much good in its first term of office degenerated to the point where the country was almost engaged in a civil war by 1982? That’s the question I would like answered without the name calling, innanities and vulgarities that seem to be a substitute for serious debate and analysis on this website.

    @ Daphne. I’ve figured out why your writings rub me the wrong way from time to time. I was brought up to believe that it is not where you start in life that counts but where you end up. In fact it was pretty much drummed into me growing up. So when you disparage people for being a “guttersnipe” simply because they are of humble origin that annoys me. When you write in a way that seems to imply that you are better than others simply because you come from a “familja pulita” that rubs me the wrong way. That’s what was eating me up – nothing about you because I have never met you and but for this negative character trait seem to have a very sharp intellect and well honed God given intuition.

    [Daphne – Madonna, Uncle Fester, honestly. Like I said, we seem to come from exactly the same background. I never heard the H word at home while growing up, and my parents and grandparents took a dim view of its use. I never use it, either – which is why parodies of me speaking and writing about hamalli are so wildly off the wall. I distinctly remember being ticked off at home for using the word after hearing it at school: “Those who describe others as hamalli are hamalli themselves.” Now down to business: the word ‘guttersnipe’ is a reference to behaviour and not necessarily to origins (def: a child of the slums who spends most of his or her time in the streets: contemptuous term applied to anyone regarded as having the manners, morals, etc. of the gutter
    ). Given that Dom Mintoff is not a child, then the intended meaning is obviously the latter. Various other members of his family with the same surname have done very well in life and are widely respected as people and not just for their accomplishments. Nobody would ever dream of using the word guttersnipe in their regard, least of all me. Secondly, I do not think I am better than others because of my family background – not at all. I only consider people’s behaviour and achievements, whether I like them or not – that’s all I care about. You seem to miss the point that what I dislike is not people of ‘humble origins’, as you put it – a phrase, incidentally, I would never use myself – but people of ‘humble origins’ who think there’s nothing at all untoward about hanging onto the manners and mores of those humble origins even when they have progressed way beyond them and should know better. In other words – somebody like Dom Mintoff, an architect, prime minister, well-married, with pots of money, who insists on guttersnipe behaviour which is really just a form of inverted snobbery. It’s completely out of place and really offensive.]

  29. Uncle Fester says:

    @Daphne. Point taken – however, I’ll just let you know that is not how you come across. Now, any insight on the point I addressed to your sister so that I can fold up my telescope for the day.

    [Daphne – I know, and I don’t give a damn. It’s not like I ever did. Ask around. The great advantage of being socially secure is in not caring what other people think because you have nothing to prove. It’s enormously liberating, and not to put too fine a point on it, only somebody with that kind of outlook could have done what I did over the last couple of decades. Had I worried what people thought, I would have stayed home with my mouth shut. Corinne – best leave it to her. She’s much smarter than I am.]

  30. Corinne Vella says:

    Uncle Fester: That’s an easy one. Mintoff’s government wasn’t in the least bit inclined to guarantee everyone’s rights and freedoms. Mintoff himself is even trying it on today as (your words) a geriatric 92-year old, telling a magistrate in court that he (Mintoff) should dictate when and where his case will be heard “ghax il-qorti jien ghamilta”.

  31. Corinne Vella says:

    Uncle Fester: And Mintoff wasn’t one to guarantee the autonomy of institutions, either. He and members of his government and their various hangers-on interfered directly with the proper functioning of the central bank, commercial banks and other private enterprise, and all in the first years of that first term of office that you say did so much good.

  32. Amanda Mallia says:

    Uncle Fester – “Has any enlightened person out there got a clue as to why Mintoff’s government that did so much good in its first term of office degenerated to the point where the country was almost engaged in a civil war by 1982? That’s the question I would like answered without the name calling, innanities and vulgarities”

    This is your answer, uttered by no other than Mintoff, in 1973:

    Jiena nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni”

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