Why politicians and their camp-followers should stay out of journalists’ hair
Notice that in Boris Johnson’s message below that the key word is IRREVERENT.
That is why so many people in Malta do not understand what it is that I do and speak in horrified tones of ‘personal attacks’ – clearly, they cannot distinguish between systematic character assassination, which is what the massive evil Labour propaganda machine does (like all good socialist machines) and what I do, which is satirical blog.
As I always say: two Maltas, and there’s no way out of the culture clash. These two Maltas have nothing to do with money or social status, either. Some of the most backward people I know are also the most well bred and/or the most moneyed. I think this is linked to the fact that they show an even greater compulsion to move and operate as a group.
I believe that one of the major failures of understanding between me and certain prominent members of the new establishment (including people like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando), and many others who are not so prominent but who are vociferous all the same on Facebook, is that I was raised in the British tradition, not the Italian or the Siculo-Arab. The mindset is completely, completely different. And then of course there is the different value system, too. I am no saint, but there is no way on earth I could have done some of those appalling things.
We just can’t understand each other because we come from two completely different cultures within the same small island. It is an anthropologist’s dream.
I grew up in house full of Punch magazine and The Spectator. They grew up watching RAI and Canale Cinque.
I do not say here that one is superior to the other, but only that the cultures are so dramatically different that they can never meet at any point. Because the island is so small, because the population is relatively tiny, we are forced into proximity and we just cannot get along.
I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few days, and it occurred to me that people’s responses to the ‘Labour movement’ – at least among those people I know, given that I can’t possibly have access to the views of people I don’t know – were largely shaped by whether their understanding of democracy is British or Italian/Siculo-Arab.
And please do no shove Kenneth Zammit Tabona into my face as he is the exception which proves the rule. That is the reason why he stood out like a sore thumb.
A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny… Under dictatorship the press is bound to languish…
But where free institutions are indigenous to the soil and men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the Fourth Estate, the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen.
– Winston Churchill
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They quoted him on the bendy buses, but The Times of Malta won’t quote him on this one.
Typo there, I think you’ll find its IRREVERENT not IRREVERANT.
[Daphne – Thank you for pointing that out. I’ve corrected it.]
Ta’ xejn, just realised that I used its instead of it’s!
Apart from your blog, Daphne, the media in our country is a far cry from that in London.
Then again we don’t have many Oxbridge graduates at our disposal.
[Daphne – Boris Johnson is not that way because he is an Oxbridge graduate, but because of the way he was raised. Louis Grech went to Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar, and got a third). Does he even begin to compare? This is the essential trouble: too many people confuse the two.]
As did Mintoff and Dominic Fenech..much good it did.
And then there’s AST.
I was referring to the journalists in London.
Kemm hu tajjeb dar-ragel.
Once you wrote that London is a place you would have loved to live in. Please do not be tempted to do it now.
The free thinking community needs you.
[Daphne – Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I spent three months in London last year and nobody noticed. This is the age of the internet, remember.]
The fourth estate is resting on your shoulders. The rest of the damn lot are either being held to ransom, have been hijacked or are fast asleep.
What a load of tosh – as we would say Brixton way (London) where I was raised and went to school. British “democracy” ensured I was suspended from school for wearing a CND badge and subsequently barred from being appointed a prefect for the same reason; I was blocked from being appointed House Football Captain by the Housemaster because he did not want a “perfumed Latin” (he lumped being Maltese with being Italian!) as a captain even though I was the best House footballer and won school colours twice for football; when I applied at the Brixton Labour Exchange for my first job the clerk sneered because I was “a Maltese”. The British media is truly democractic – hence all the current hacking disgraces, including that of the now (thankfully) defunct News of the World impersonating a murdered girl to lead her parents to believe she was still alive. There are volumes more – but that should suffice. The British “democracy” extends to the British Establishment – full stop.
ALBERT FENECH
[Daphne – Easy to see where the chips come from, Albert.]
I love the sound of your Housemaster, Albert. A ‘perfumed Latin’. Gorgeous.
Interesting comment, Mr Fenech.
You would have found that the alternative to “perfumed Latin” would have been even less flattering.
Getting suspended for wearing a CND badge is a little harsh but the CND did evoke Communist connotations in Britain so much so that the MI5 considered it “Communist-controlled” and “Communist-penetrated” at different times.
When the wearer is thought to hail from Italy, home of the largest Communist party in the west, the housemaster’s frown must have deepened.
I dislike generalisations as much as the next guy but do you really blame the clerk for sneering (at the time) when the Brixton job centre is half an hour away from Soho?
And Daphne please, enough with the Italy bashing already :-)
Two tribes for sure but I would hope it’s not simply the Anglo – Italian divide (fairness and vindictiveness excluded).
[Daphne – It definitely is the Anglo/Italian divide. Perhaps I should be more specific: not Italian at all, but Siculo-Arab/Southern Italian. The mindsets are so completely different that they can never understand each other. It took me a long time to understand this. As for Italy, there is much about it that I love (a great part of my work is in food, remember), but generally speaking it is an undynamic society that is not open to growth or external influence, and the many problems it is experiencing today are the result of that long, slow process of fossilisation. In protecting what was was seen as the epitome of achievement in food, art, and so on, they in effect fossilised it at a single point. The fantastic design activity in Milan is the exception that proves the rule.]
I agree with everything you wrote about Italy and must say that you are much kinder to the Italian south than any of my Tuscan and Piedmontese acquaintances.
My qualm is how this translates to Malta. I feel that the Siculo-Arab definition is a politically correct and xenophobia-free way of saying Arab culture. I do not wish to make too fine a point but I believe that the Maltese cultural divide has more to do more with the internalisation of 10 years of anti-west propaganda, compulsory Arabic lessons and humiliating green passports than a generation of of kids with nothing better to watch than RAI or the Fininvest stations.
On a separate but related note I wish to recommend to your readers a book about the history of Italy and the quasi-irreconcilable nature of its regions. It’s called ‘In Pursuit of Italy’ by David Gillmore (not of Pink Floyd fame). He explains that the aversion to outside influence is driven by the regions and not the nation and that more subtle and complex repulsive forces are in play than the old north/south divide. (It’s a bit of a slog in the middle, mind)
You mention British as opposed to Italian culture. But then again, Italian journalism is quickly catching up with sectors of the media dishing out critcism towards politicians from every angle.
In Malta on the other hand, we have the culture of ‘haxxejja’, of playing the victim, in other words, with politicians making recourse to that famous fake phrase ‘inhossni imwegga’.
I think a majority of our (pseudo) politicians are untrustworthy.
Many are millionaires and play the beggar card. Only the gullible believe them.
So Rai and Canane 5 and those who watched these channels are bad, very bad …
[Daphne – No, not bad, just different. And watching RAI was all right as long as you also got plenty of exposure to British journalism, but sadly, few Maltese households did and the results are all around us.]
If these is a country which has a sense of culture, it is Italy. It is no no conincidence that the Renaissance occurred in Italy and that the greatest painters, sculptors, composers and musicinans are mainly Italian.
[Daphne – That’s not what I mean when I use the word ‘culture’. Culture is not synonymous with art. That’s a Maltese misunderstanding of the word, shored up in the concept of a ‘Ministry of Culture’ which should more properly be a Ministry for the Arts.]
So sorry to disagree with you – completely – about this Daphne. I grew up with Rai and Italian television, absolutely LOVE Italy and everything Italian, am proud of my Italian / Sicilian origins and absolutely DETEST the Labour party and the present crop of turncoats. Their mindset is so very different to mine.
On the other hand, so many anglophiles, who are immersed in the English way of life, are pro-Labour or have switched over to Labour. Actually, I rather think they are pro-Labour because they are pro-English.
Otherwise, I tend to agree so often (but not always) with what you write and am so glad that this blog is still going strong.
[Daphne – It’s got nothing to do with being an Italophile or an Anglophile. Many of the Anglophiles I know are 100% Sicilian in their forma mentis, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando being the prime example.]