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.)

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.

Gioachino Rossini also had a badly fitting wig of the wrong colour but at least he was a great music composer.

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?

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.]

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.]

An emperor’s new clothes moment because I didn’t know he was the prime minister and had to be taken seriously.

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.]

Malta missed Magna Grecia. All we have are ‘temples’.

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.