A sad foot-note to the Labour Party’s shamelessly cynical use, to further its own ends, of people with psychiatric problems
Jo Said: the Labour Party’s foot-soldiers rounded on those who criticized them for the shameless use of a disturbed man as a weapon of attack. They said that his mental health was questioned only because he campaigned against the Nationalist Party. But they knew the truth was otherwise. Jo Said killed himself last Saturday.
The Labour Party has a long history of treating the unbalanced as being of normal psychology and portraying them to the public as such. In this they are so irresponsibly helped by much of the media, which do the same.
There are the obvious cases in which those individuals have, because of this backing by the Labour Party towards its own cynical ends, the potential to wreak havoc and create much damage to the country and its institutions – Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono, for example.
Then there are those who don’t have a platform from which to threaten, blackmail or backstab on a grand scale, but who were still used by the Labour Party (and the media) as bit-players for marginal damage in a political war.
They don’t end up chairman of the Malta Council of Science and Technology with their mistress installed as their personal assistant on the public payroll, or Law Reform Commissioner with no results to show yet after nine months.
One of them is, or was, Jo Said, who the Labour Party used heavily in the 2008 general election and sporadically after that to cause damage to ‘GonziPN’. They took what he said literally, reported his accusations, and twisted all criticism that they were shamelessly using a man whose psychological problems were so great that he was actually receiving a disability pension, to rebound on their accusers. “Jo Said is speaking out against them and revealing their ‘sins’, so they are saying that he is not all there. How disgusting they are!” But the fact is that it was they who were disgusting for using him.
Three days after Christmas, Jo Said killed himself by jumping off a tall building. You will not see this reported in the Labour Party media – not because it was a suicide, but because they have disowned him already. They could have reported his death without reporting the cause. Maybe at last they are feeling some kind of shame for their use of a sick man as a weapon of attack. But I think it more likely that he was just grist to their mill, that they have forgotten him already, and haven’t even noticed his obituary.
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Shocking!
Indeed. First they used him and squeezed him like an orange. Just as they did to the billboard boys. However, instead of giving him an iced bun (as they had done to the chosen ones), they just threw him in the bin.
DAPHNE, YOU ARE WORSE THAN DIRT ! SHAME ON YOU FOR COMMENTING IN THIS WAY ON JOB SAID, JUST BECAUSE HE HAD LEFT THE PN WAY BACK BEFORE THE 2008 ELECTION !
[Daphne – I’m sorry, Mr Privitera, but you completely miss the point of this post while proving it. The people who are worse than dirt are those who knowingly used a man who was unwell for their own cynical political ends and who, when it was pointed out that he was unwell, reacted exactly as you have done here, and worse. It is not those who remark on the immoral acts of others who are wrong or in the wrong, but those who commit those immoral acts in the first place. Unfortunately, Maltese culture favours topsy-turvy reasoning, in which those who do something wrong – in this case, the Labour Party, as Jo Said was not responsible for his actions much of the time – must be protected by others in a collusion of secrecy masquerading as decency. If the Nationalist Party were ever to make use of a vulnerable individual I would react in exactly the same way.]
Unbelievable! Eddy, it is your beloved Labour Party who are shamed when it comes to Jo Said. They used him and squeezed him dry to their own benefit during that campaign, all in the name of political mileage.
Read this piece again with an (ahem) open mind – impossible maybe, I know. All you have done is jumped on the man’s mental state, his sad and unfortunate death, and in turn attacked Daphne for bringing it to light.
U kemm kont pront biex titfa kumment, Eddy? Mela ha ikolli nghid li in-Notebook ta’ Daphne qieghed fil-Favorites tiehek!
I’m not surprised in the slightest though, that you’d prefer nothing was said about the matter. Always toeing the Labour Party Line eh?
Well said, Daphne – I refer to your response to this hypocritical, Labour/Mintuffjan dinosaur.
Inconsiderate, heartless and cruel of Mr Privitera to disown their misdeeds and turns on Daphne instead. Thanks for defining what dirt is Mr Privitera. Now we confirm the dirt lies within your party.
Only someone as delusional as you, Eddy, would manage to come up with this type of an accusation.
Perhaps its time to go see a psychologist – I’m sure he would diagnose you with ‘Labouritis’.
Eddy, answer the simple question: Who used Jo Said while he was alive and unwell? I hope you will not use him now after his death as well.
May he rest in peace.
Eddy Privitera, if you weren’t as nasty and baseless as your masters, I would have thought you can’t read.
Eddy, I would love to tell you to go back to school and re-sit all your comprehension exams. But it’s too late now. They say man evolved an intelligence in order to survive, or he would have died out. I think Darwin and that chap Desmond Morris have never been to Malta.
Don’t know about Darwin – but I’ve had a chat with Desmond Morris in Valletta.
Eddy, are you for real or are you still tripping from the 60s?
Excuse my frankness but posted above are a few simple lines in plain English, yet you massively fail to understand.
I despair and lose all faith in democracy when I know that people like you have a vote. Unfortunately it is too late for you to realise that you are heavily blinkered.
Eddy, look at you making a fool of yourself all over the media and yet you are left out in the cold.
Not even a token position on some board or other token of appreciation and yet you are the most vociferous defender of the indefensible.
Look who’s sprung back! Been a while since you’ve made one of your elaborate speeches on the Times of Malta comments board.
But I guess that, following an increase in prices and the selling of public transport (which is now funded from our pocket), should be enough to silence someone even as damn well brainwashed as you are.
Speaking of which, do be careful nowadays. At least, hearing this news, you should fear for your safety. After all, the Labour Party is fully loyal to those who ruthlessly spread dirt against Nationalists.
Also, I’ve told you this repeatedly: stop using capital letters. It doesn’t prove your baseless point anyway.
Shocking. No other word really.
May he now rest in peace.
May he rest in peace and may his family find consolation. Indeed shameful of the PL using him in such a way.
You need to mention The Times as well for taking the lead from Labour and treating Jo Said as a stable person. Its reporters encouraged him without bothering to research his background or discover the facts. And this to the pleasure of (and service to) the MLP.
SCREAMING SHOUTING ILL-MANNERED thicko Privitera’s Labour did the same thing with that Gozitan ex-councillor.
They did the same with an ex-MP from Gozo. There was then that teenage boy, pressed into their rent-a-mob during a Leaders’ debate at MCAST during the electoral campaign.
They did the same with Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
I’m ashamed to say I’d almost forgotten that particular episode. I have to say that my disgust at the Labour Party-Government has reached new heights.
So according to Matthew Vella and company its “sick” to report the demise of a person who placed himself in the public eye by repeatedly ranting against the party in government to “vent his self-interested ire” but it’s not sick for the Labour Party and its media to knowingly exploit this man’s unstable mental state for its own purposes.
That’s truly inspired and impartial journalism isn’t it?
Also, how can one take Malta Today and its journalists seriously when they use language that is utterly unsuitable for publication?
No, Matthew Vella. It’s not f*cking sick but you’re f*cking daft. The late Jo Said (may he rest in peace) became a public person the moment he “made full use of a platform offered by a willing Labour Party”, to say nothing of the platform your newspaper gave him alongside that one.
‘It is not those who remark on the immoral acts of others who are wrong or in the wrong, but those who commit those immoral acts in the first place.’
A most appreciated description of when evil takes over. And there is a lot of this on this blessed island.
It may well be true that the MLP used Jo Said to further their ends, but the context in which you have chosen to put the man’s demise is just as cynical.
[Daphne – Not at all, Reuben. I’m a journalist, not a censor. All the arguments against publishing are fallacious. I thought deeply about this and tested them all. ‘Think of his family’: if that were the case, very little news would be published. Everybody who is in the news for unhappy reasons has a family. There are no circumstances in which some families are more privileged than others.
Then there is the censorship argument: I have the right to know but apparently, the duty to keep this knowledge from others. This argument is as fallacious as the one which says that five adults can watch a play and then decide whether the other 200,000 adults can do the same.
Nobody who wants an easy life becomes a journalist. There are too many of these difficult situations to deal with. In fact, many drop out along the way precisely because they can’t take it.
I’ve noticed that I get far more flak when I write about ‘people like us’ – i.e. the socially networked and socially privileged – than I do when I write about somebody from the wrong part of town. This is because there is a natural tendency for people to protect their own, and to see it as a betrayal when this doesn’t happen. The individuals who are upset because I wrote about this death and they knew the man socially would not have reacted the same way if it had been somebody else who they didn’t meet at parties, whose wife and children were unknown to them. It is not the principle which angers them, but their wish to protect their own.
Consider the difference in attitude among the same people – and this includes the ones who own and work for Malta Today, as well as those with no public profile – towards convicted cocaine trafficker Meinrad Calleja (‘one of us’, so all criticism of him is a ‘vile attack’) and towards convicted cocaine trafficker L-Imriehru (‘ma nafuhx’, so let’s go to town).]
Daphne,
You should have never published how the poor guy died.
May he rest in peace.
[Daphne – Why not? The arguments for publication are far stronger and more numerous than the arguments against. I am not even sure what the arguments against are, exactly. So far, I have only had ‘think of his family’. But that’s the case with most news stories in which individuals are involved for unfortunate reasons. They all have families and nobody thinks of them, for the simple reason that a family’s emotions are not justification for preventing a news report. It does not follow from this that the people who publish have no feelings about the situation. Imagine how those photographers feel, for instance, who must record the dead and dying in disaster areas.]
I cannot understand the amazement: With Jason Micallefs promise of reverting Strait Street, in Valletta to its former prostitute hot-bed, nothing else can possibly amaze me – just unbelievable!
Please everyone stop for a minute. A person passed away in very difficult circumstances. Think about the pain he and his family have been through.
May he rest in peace. Condolences to the family.
Dear Ms.Caruana Galizia, Disgraceful reporting on your part. Leave this man rest in peace.
[Daphne – Ms Smith, journalists report the news, not make it. It would be disgraceful to withhold that information from readers, not the other way round. I assume you did not write in to Malta Today and the Labour Party to call them disgraceful for using a vulnerable man to their own cynical ends, yet here you are, turning normal reasoning upside down.]
Why is that since tal-Lejber got into power Eddy has always been on the defensive?
Daphne, please let the man rest in peace. Can you just imagine what his family are passing through? You are a very good journalist but please try to be sensitive and think of the loved ones he left behind.
[Daphne – That is one of the fundamental difficulties with reportage or commentary, Ms Farrugia. If we had to think of the families involved, little would ever be reported or discussed. ‘Think of the family’ is not a logical or feasible argument against reporting news or discussing it. This particular family will already have had experience of that as they also expected to have no discussion and minimal reportage on the Noel Arrigo bribery case, which would have been totally unacceptable. ‘Think of the family’, however, is a rule/guideline for editing readers’ comments and frivolous journalistic commentary that involves speculation and irrelevancies, and I adhere to that myself, deleting stupid, speculative and malicious remarks when they come in.
For example, I think the comments facility beneath certain news stories should be disabled unless administrators are prepared to do some proper editing. Two fairly recent examples would be the double murder on New Year’s Day two years ago, and the death by drowning of that French family who left Xlendi in a yacht tender in high wind. In situations like that, newspapers should not allow people to speculate or make offensive, personal remarks as though they are talking about characters in a film rather than real people.
In any case, I can assure you through personal experience that when people suffer tragedy, the last thing they care about is what the newspapers are saying – though this is certainly no reason to allow the sort of viciousness I saw on Malta Today’s comments-board after the double murder two years ago. Though I hold no brief for anyone involved in that, the remarks were so appalling, and so obviously posted by somebody riven by envy and malice, that I actually rang Claudine Cassar, whose company built the website, to speak to whoever was responsible for allowing them to be uploaded. They made me sick to the stomach.]
Rest in peace, dear Jo.
Unfortunately I only got to know you these last two years.
Early in our friendship I discovered in you a noble heart that could on be nourished by a keen intellect.
We both found solece in each other as how the Nationalist Party…… have been hijacked by a pervert and sinister element that sinned against The Holy Spirit.
Sins against The Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven by The Church …..Those who sin against The Holy Spirit can only ask for Mercy from God…..At least that what the Church teaches us.
According to Thomas Aquinas these are the following sins.
Despair:which consist in thinking that one’s malice is greater than The Divine Goodness.
Presumtion: if a person want to obtain glory without merits.
Resistance to know the truth.
Envy of a brother’s spiritual good.
Impenitence.
Obstinacy…
These last few months Jo retreated to solidute. Perhaps he could not bear the injustice anymore.
Farewell dear Jo….And rest assured that I will defend your retreat from any malice that try to persecute you beyond death.
Farewell……
[Daphne – I would leave religion out of it, you know. These are very much secular matters, and it doesn’t help to confuse issues.]
So would you say the same about me if I died, Daphne?
[Daphne – Dying is not the same thing as killing yourself, Mr Woods. There is nothing to infer from death but plenty (that is relevant to the matter) to infer from death by one’s own hand. In any case, as I recall your problem was not so much psychiatric as the fact that you were upset about your brother being accused of corruption, whereupon you flew into the Labour Party’s arms.]
Fil-comment ta’qabli kiteb Michael Woods, il-purcinell l-iehor li mar jghajjat Viva l-Lejber fil-Konferenza Generali u li flimkien ma Jo Said tqiesu bhala assets tal-Lejber fl-2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeqEZU0WBzM