Paparazzi! The Law Commissioner disports himself on his summer break.
Published:
September 3, 2013 at 10:43pm
Tragic, isn’t it, how his hair has gone. I mean, had you actually realised that he’s bald? I hadn’t. Now he and Joseph are square. Literally.
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Ara Franco xi gralu
Bl-inkwiet waqghalu xaghru.
Ah yes, they might be square as regards hair follicles but did Joseph Muscat get 100 in Religion in Form IIC? I think not.
Always so alone, dejected and cut off.
No wonder he’s so desperate for attention.
He doesn’t hold a candle to this guy, does he?
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jetski.png
He has really chubbed up with all those tuna on toast and warm Kinnies.
Kollu bl-inkwiet li nkwetawk tal-PN,
Miskin, the little boy needs a driver for the jet ski. Mummy won’t let little ciccio ride the boaty-woaty on his own cos he’ll do mimmi
Dak bl-inkwiet li kellu mal-Partit Nazzjonalista issa jinsab trankwill ghax tal-Labour tawh dak li ried.
Daphne, why do you feel the need to keep berating people on physical appearance that they have little or no control over, when there is so much more to say about them? At least a third to a half of men Franco’s age are bald or balding, so that hardly makes him special, does it?
[Daphne – Why would I berate anyone because they’re bald? To me, baldness in men over a certain age is entirely normal. Most men I knew growing up and most men in my family are bald.
It’s the ones with hair who I think of as unusual. And that’s precisely why men who are frightened by their baldness, who go to great lengths to pretend to themselves and others that it isn’t happening, are ridiculous to me, including the prime minister, with that circular scar round his scalp where he clearly had that (failed) scalp lift, his predecessor with his wig, and the Law Commissioner with his panic. My advice to them is: men go bald. Nobody else bothers when you go bald. It’s normal. What isn’t normal, what people find creepy, is scalp lifts, wigs and massive insecurity.
Also, surely you should be able to link the two: the baldness phobia and the personality problems, which include painting a false picture of oneself.]
I do get your point, though I have a good deal of sympathy for men who go bald in middle age or later because I was lucky enough (though I sure didn’t think it at the time) to get it all over and done with in my early 20s, when it was just a cosmetic change that meant nothing at all.
Now, as I go through middle age and the inevitable aches, pains and stupid injuries start showing up from time to time, I’m grateful that I don’t have to look in the mirror and be constantly reminded that, no matter how young I feel in the inside, my body is not what it used to be.
I think it’s rather more than the pointing out of insecurity.
The way I see it, Daphne provides an essential pillar of the Hellenic dialectic which is the basis of our democracy. That pillar is mockery.
There is a rather moving scene in ‘The People vs Larry Flynt’ where Flynt’s lawyer makes a speech before the US Supreme Court.
By mocking people like Franco Debono, we are exercising our fundamental right to say that they’re full of bullshit.
And it is precisely by mocking them that we can do so, because by their very nature, political figures like Franco Debono hoist themselves onto a pedestal of self-assumed dignity and righteousness.
By mocking them, we bring them down to our own level and then we can engage in dialectic and logical debate.
Democracy is weak where satire is weak. A nation that does not mock its leaders is a nation under oppression. The book of history is proof enough.
Malta missed Magna Grecia. All we have are ‘temples’.
Fair enough, Baxxter, but mockery is also one of the basest forms of fallacious Ad Hominem reasoning and arguing. While people like us who know how solid Daphne’s real arguments tend to be may be ready to put up with it, I think mocking her targets only provides fodder to her detractors and alienates other people who might otherwise take a closer look at what she has to say.
We all have our own defects, after all, and even the best of us is a prime target for being mocked. That’s why it remains a cheap shot unbecoming of someone of Daphne’s stature, in my view.
[Daphne – Oh do stop it. There’s such a cultural gulf here that it’s impossible to speak across it. We’re just shouting at each other in the wind. “Unbecoming of someone of Daphne’s stature”…that’s actually how I acquired that stature in the first place, Peritocracy, and you seem to be unaware that precisely this role is taken on, in better developed societies than ours, by people of my “stature”. Most of this country’s problems are cultural: we’re caught between North Africa and Europe, and while we seek the outward trappings of Europeanism, our culture remains essentially North African in its developmental failure to grasp the underpinnings of basic European democracy, which have little or nothing to do with parliamentary elections.]
We could always agree to disagree on this point, Daphne.
No matter what people in other “better developed societies” do I personally would leave the low-hanging fruit to be gorged on by those who are unable to reach any higher, and that does not make me any more or less European or North African.
[Daphne – The day I come to your office and give you instructions on how to do your job, Peritocracy, is the day you can somehow feel entitled to tell me how to do mine. If you knew how to do this, you would be doing it.]
And let me leave you with one last thought, if I may.
If you feel you are shouting into the wind with someone like me who wholeheartedly applauds and admires you especially for your courage to stick your neck out and speak your mind, even after all you have been through, (though I grant you may not have known that about me) then imagine how much harder it is to get your message across to people who dismiss you out of hand just because of the way you sometimes choose to make your point.
[Daphne – I see you miss the essential point, even though I made it earlier and made it repeatedly over the years. I am not here to get a message across. I am not a politician or a political campaigner. I am an entertainer. Sometimes I use information to entertain, sometimes opinions, and sometimes jokes and mockery. It is a recipe which has allowed me to stay at the top of my game since the age of 25 – which takes some doing, considering how many others have come and gone – and that game is neither politics nor messages. It is entertainment.]
If you are happy to preach to the choir and write for the sole benefit of those who have been exposed to the better developed societies you speak of, then I have nothing more to add. If you hope to help change the part of Maltese society you dislike for the better, then there may be a more effective way to get some of these people to start listening to you.
[Daphne – See above. Not interested. Had I wanted to be a politician or a missionary, I would have been one. Yes, I do this because I think it’s an essential service, but it’s an essential service in the name of democracy and free speech, not politics. Could it possibly ever occur to you for one moment that there actually is a democratic purpose to pissing people off with my views? That this is precisely why I do it – because listening to a chorus-line chant is tedious and dangerous?
Your assessment is flawed because you begin with a false premiss: that I am a politician and that I exist to convince others. Not so. Actually, I exist to piss people off.]
When you start off with “fair enough” you should follow up with something which is basically in line with the argument you’re referring to, perhaps with a few differences. But you proceeded to say the exact contrary of what I had just written.
Mockery isn’t fallacious. It can’t be, or it wouldn’t be funny.
Humour is based on truth (ah, the Second Book of Aristotle!). And it is by definition ad hominem. It has to be. And that’s the whole point of what I wrote.
Mockery isn’t fallacious in and of itself, but commonly used as part of a fallacious Ad Hominem attack, discrediting the person rather than his arguments. I would elaborate further, but I have two comments in this thread made before yours (around midday) that are still to be published.
(And they say ‘but’ negates whatever came before it, so I guess fair warning in my previous comment.)
You need to look into this in light of the PM’s family business (the media once again fails to notice this important aspect, as everyone bangs about – quite rightly – his conflict of interest as the association’s lawyer):
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130904/local/fireworks-associations-lawyer-headys-policy-revision.484767
Alas, a cock with no feathers.
Yesterday on NET News the prime minister appeared during a meeting with Tony Zahra and the MHRA.
He had so much grey hair at his temples that he looked like a 50 year-old with badly applied orange hair dye on the other patches. And his fake smile – enough said.
As for the part-time Law Commissioner, you have to admit it, he still has the treasure trail. It’s the treasure that may have gone missing.
He’s rather thick around the middle, isn’t he? His is a stereotypical middle-aged appearance, which makes his Form IIC shenanigans all the more absurd.
How anyone could have trusted or admired this man, I will never, ever understand. He is beyond ridiculous.
He’s rather thick. Fullstop.
Oh, that too, but so many seem not to have noticed. If our electorate had any sense, Franco Debono would have been laughed out of town and left to feed his chickens, not hailed as a hero and appointed Law Commissioner and head of constitutional reform.
First time I saw Alfred Sant, I pissed myself laughing. Badly fitted wig; wrong colour.
An emperor’s new clothes moment because I didn’t know he was the prime minister and had to be taken seriously.
Gioachino Rossini also had a badly fitting wig of the wrong colour but at least he was a great music composer.
Most of this country’s problems are cultural: we’re caught between North Africa and Europe, and while we seek the outward trappings of Europeanism, our culture remains essentially North African in its developmental failure to grasp the underpinnings of basic European democracy, which have little or nothing to do with parliamentary elections.
I so agree. I have long felt that there are indeed two Maltas: the culturally North African and the culturally European and, believe me, by the looks of it, the “North Africans” amongst us are winning the day.
THIS is my opinion (this divide between the two Maltas) is the basic problem here and THIS is why some of us still see Gonzi as the only true leader we’ve had in the past decade whilst others view Joseph Muscat as the Messiah himself.
The two are basically incomparable – for me there is simply no comparison. But if I view Gonzi from the point of view of those who want to remain indisciplined, of those who want their free lunch and those who want to bloodsuck their living off the nation and those who want to be given handouts, then I understand the landslide victory.
The tragedy of it is that the North African mentality seems to be the prevalent one. But, I wonder, for how long?