Isn’t this photograph just like something from the 19th century?
Published:
June 21, 2013 at 8:54am
‘Pillar of society gives fruit to unfortunates, surrounded by requisite admiring and supportive crowd and town photographer’
‘Nice white man gives basket of fruit to poor African piccaninnies, performing act of Christian charity and consolidating position of superiority’
Liberal and progressive, my left foot.
17 Comments Comment
Reply to ken il malti Click here to cancel reply
Victorian, but unfortunately PN used the same tactics, with Gonzi photographing himself with kids. Endemically Maltese all this..
[Daphne – You know that’s not what I mean. There is absolutely nothing wrong in being PHOTOGRAPHED with children. What’s wrong in this photograph is the 19th-century symbolism: ‘town dignitary giving fruit to the poor black children, surrounded by other town dignitaries and aides, looking on patronisingly’.]
I know what you mean, Daphne but Gonzi’s flirtations with the media were not always tasteful.
PN, now needs to distinguish itself from PL and make sure that satellites of ex dodgy figures are out of the picture. It is a must to look beyond activists and ‘tesserati’ for advice. No cheap propaganda, no dodgy tactics. With a PL in dissaray, PN is clearly Malta’s only hope.
“Ha dan it-tuffieh tathuli familja li ghamlet tlett donazzjonijiet lil-Partit Nazzjonalist meta ghamlu l-gabra/maratona, ‘min m’ghandux jghix ma min ghandu’ qalulkom”
Whose propaganda is this, I ask Vivamalta? The Times’s? Or Manuel ‘Pushback’ Mallia’s?
2013 Labour surpasses anything we’ve seen for sheer brazen hypocrisy. They win the election on the strength of the Far Right anti-immigrant vote but they need the Muslim vote too. So off with pathetic hampers of fruit (!?) courtesy of Imam & Co. for the little starving picaninnies.
It has ever been thus. In place of policies, for we have none, we offer stocking-filler charity.
Qalilhom li id- dr. muscat ried lill-gvern Nazzjonalista jghamel bhall-gvern taljan u jibghat id-dghajjes bihom fuqhom lura minn fejn gew?
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
― Mark Twain
U tbaxxa lejhom u qalilhom : “Dan huwa il-frott ta’ Malta Taghna Lkoll. Arawh qieghed f’qoffa. Ahna ghandna l-endorsement ta’ Norman Lowell ukoll ghal dawn l-affarjiet”
The intention is good but the message is wrong; it would have been a better idea if children of different ethnicity were seen giving fruit, playing together, interacting, and showing that ultimately we are all the same; black or white, rich or poor. The message would have had been even better if the children giving the gifts were off-springs of people in government.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
– Rudyard Kipling (1899)
And as he gratuitously donated the fruit to the poor African children, who were looking enviously at his paunch while thinking “this bourgee is evidently not on a diet of fruit”, he whispered: “next time round, you will be ‘pushed back’ to wherever you came from thanks to our push-back-we-don’t-care-if-you-die policy”.
It is always “gibs me dat” with these jigs.
They certainly are the white man’s burden.
How disgustingly condenscending of the ”big white man with the goodies for the starving unfortunates”.
When will they start doing what they promised the switchers during the campagn? So far nothing is new and they have around 200 promises to accomplish before the electorate will have a second chance of thought.
Ghada se jkun qed iqassam il-meals on wheels. Il-platt shun ta’ Louis Galea mwassal lilkom minn Manuel Mallia. Labour delivers.
I wrote this as a comment on another entry but it’s more appropriate here.
I suppose we should be thankful the minister didn’t present them with bunches of bananas. This is the party Norman Lowell voted for, after all.
Think those beautiful little kids are wondering, ‘Did you that fat on this shit?
The pathetic show is more in bad taste when one considers the main thrust of the speech was about relocating (read send them away) refugees elsewhere.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with relocating refugees and asylum seekers (I suspect most would actually love that), but come on, giving a press conference about relocating refugees, at a refugee open centre of all places?
The message I would take from that would be “I’ll give you some charity, but I would get rid of you at the first opportunity”.
Then again, it is Manuel Mallia. So what else should we expect?