It’s all about him – always
Published:
September 12, 2012 at 1:28am
Franco has even managed to make himself the reason why I closed my laptop for 10 days and didn’t look at it. The reason is that I was on holiday and needed a break from the urban underclass and their informed political choices.
But he thinks it was a test to see how he would react. Jahasra, m’hawnx xi vet itih daqsxejn ketamine shot?
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No one needs a break from Daphne. It’s free comedy 24 hours a day. Only in Malta.
[Daphne – Admit it, Joseph Carmel. You love me. At this rate I might even do a Pastor Gordon, and turn you.]
“Maybe they’re just doing a survey…”
Well Franco, if she’s back it must be mostly pluses, you cretin.
Well, yours was a well deserved break. Quite frankly I don’t know how you do it.
It seems like a superhuman effort to write so much, so well, so quickly and, above all, so well argued.
The last time I had to do any serious writing was in my university exams, and while most other people were asking for reams and reams of additional answer sheets, in three hours I always struggled to fill the four sides of my first sheet.
I did get an honours degree in the end, so I guess quality did count more than quantity.
I was holidaying in the south of France last week but that didn’t mean I left Malta for good.
X’injuranza ta’ nies! Qualifiers tal-Guiness Book of World Records, fl-injoranza.
He’s going bald faster than he can say oligarkija.
Would have been better if you stayed away for a bit longer. The country felt suddenly cleaner.
[Daphne – Yes, if your idea of cleanliness is a thousand hamalli screaming ‘bott liba’ and other obscenities.]
So funny! Haven’t laughed so hard in weeks!
With all due respect Daphne, Bettina might be quite right. When you are not around the dirt is swept under the carpet and Malta ‘feels’ cleaner. You are just like a hurricane in that room. Carpet out and dust flying all over the place. Tikxef id-dnubijiet kollha!
Well with the things you write, you don’t expect people to send you roses, do you?
[Daphne – That is a non sequitur, bettina. You said that Malta felt cleaner in my absence, and I pointed out that a thousand hamalli shouting about ‘liba’ hardly makes for cleanliness. But to follow up with your non sequitur, yes, I do expect them to react that way. They are the urban underclass of a southern Mediterranean port, and know no better.]
May I ask you something? do you consider yourself better than the thousand hamalli who wrote the obscentities you are talking about?
[Daphne – Is this a rhetorical question? Of course I’m better. Not through any effort of my own, though. I was just luckier. Please understand that this does not mean that I consider myself ‘more equal’ or more deserving of rights and privileges. It is just that it is obvious that my abilities are wider and greater in scope. As I said, I was just luckier. But they are lucky, too, in a way. They could have been born into the same families 50 or worse, 100, years ago, when their future would have been utterly hopeless no matter how bright they are. Now, they have the world at their feet, quite literally, and every educational opportunity and advantage. So if they don’t take advantage of that, luck has nothing to do with it and laziness and ineptitude do. So fine, you’re raised in a household where the language and manners and appalling and where nobody can think or reason or converse. How does that prevent you, once you reach adulthood, from learning better ways?]
because you are exactly that – a Hamalla who writes obscenities. You are more likely to do it in English but obscentities are obscentities no matter what language is used. So yes – the country felt cleaner without you. Should have stayed away longer. PLEASE LEAVE AGAIN.
[Daphne – I have a far better suggestion. You should leave, as a group. It will do you a lot of good and open your eyes to other ways of living and being, as long as, of course, you don’t choose a hick town in the American Deep South because you will only feel very much at home and it will do you no good at all.]
I did live abroad and travel quite frequently too. I also have a university education and I did not form part of the people who shouted obscentities to you and neither approve what you write (not that you need my approval but in any case). So do not categorise because not everyone who disagrees with you is a laburist.
[Daphne – I did not say that everyone who disagrees with me is a Laburist. Nor did I say that it is wrong to disagree with anyone, let alone with me. I said that it is wrong to attempt to silence people because we do not agree with them, and that it is especially wrong to do so by those means. It doesn’t work on me, not at all, but it certainly works on others and that’s one of the reasons why there is so much fear and self-censorship in Malta. Not fear of the government – clearly not; look around you and scan the internet – but fear of the government-in-waiting. A university education, living away from Malta and travelling often will not help you unless you start out with an open mind. There is evidence of that all around. Sadly, you are a case in point. All your travelling, living abroad and university education have not given you the capacity for rational argument. Remember always that wise men (and women) are permitted to play the fool only because it is known that they are also perfectly capable of working through a proper argument. All others are not playing the fool. They are fools.]
Standing on your pedestal to tell me that you are better does not convince me.
[Daphne – There you go: by using an expression like ‘standing on your pedestal’ you have betrayed the feelings which underpin your resentment, and which have nothing to do with my arguments but everything to do with how you perceive me, as a tal-pepe person who refuses to adopt the popular harm-aversion tactic of ‘being humble’, thereby causing you offence. I do not have a pedestal and I do not stand on one or allow myself to be placed on one. However, the fact remains that I am not in the ‘ja bott l*ba’ category, never was, never will be, and nothing can change that. I am not going to run around claiming to be working-class-made-good just so that you can sleep easier at night. Nor am I going to pretend to be ditzy so that you can feel less threatened. The problem lies with you and your attitude, and not with me and mine. Until you recognise that, you will always feel hard done by and ‘unequal’.]
You write obscentities in English, [Daphne – Well, what can I say? Lots of posh people swear like troopers. It’s only those who try hard to be posh who never let an obscenity pass their lips, even in private. It’s only the nature of the obscenities that’s different. We would never say ‘bott l*ba’, for instance, except in irony.] you pick on people (be they dead or alive) simply because they disagree/d with the PN [Daphne – I don’t pick on people. I write about them, generally because they need to be written about. If this is a problem, I suggest that the next time you choose to ‘live abroad’, you make sure that place is neither Britain nor North America.] and you hardly ever ever attack the argument of what they are stating but you attack them and their families personally. [Daphne – Completely wrong. Also, what you perceive to be a ‘personal attack’ is either entirely relevant to the argument or satire that is perfectly normal elsewhere, though not in Malta, the Kingdom of Exceptionalism.]
To me you are much worse than a person with poor education. [Daphne – That’s quite all right, bettina. I have already made it amply clear that I will fight hard for your right to think of me what you will, and say so. But you should know that one of the most serious problems, so to speak, with horrid tal-pepe people like me is that rarely care what other people think of them. I’ll admit that if I cared more about what other people think, my behaviour would be different. But I don’t, so tough. I especially don’t care what the ‘bott l*ba’ brigade think.]
And no, not everyone living today has the world at his feet as you are stating. There are still poor people in our society who do not afford to spend 4 years at university or who struggle to make a living. You have no right to insult them.
[Daphne – Total bollocks. I spent five years at university while struggling to make ends meet with three children under 10 and working part-time to put petrol in the tank and food on the table. If that was possible, then it is perfectly possible for an 18-year-old living with mummy and daddy, and with no dependants, to go into higher education and pull pints in the evening to supplement his stipend. Poverty has nothing to do with it. Lack of initiative and an allergy to hard graft does. When people say, in the current scenario, that they are too poor to go to university, it’s just an excuse. Their claims are undermined by these scores of Labour lawyer-politicians who always make a point of saying that they come from ‘poor, working-class backgrounds’. So how exactly did they do it?]
Struggling to make a living has nothing to do with the price of eggs. Or with being a hamallu or a subliterate. Some of the greatest geniuses in history struggled for a living. Some even died, literally, in a gutter.
But I don’t blame you. I blame PN for equating affluence with status. Because, you know, since we’re all, as the Bible says, equal, then the only difference that remains is wealth. So wealthier = high class and poorer = low class.
[Daphne – THANK YOU, H.P. I’ve been trying to explain this until blue in the face.]
Someone should write a manual on “How to Destroy Civilisation in Less than Fifty Years – For Dummies”. And just collate Maltese political speeches and manifestos since 1964.
Qed tara! Blue in the face! Qas tisthi tammetti li hi Nazzjonalista! etc. until eternity.
Anyway. What PN started, with their silly laqghat taht it-tinda and konsultazzjoni mal-pubbliku, Xarabank turned into a national pastime. Kullhadd ghandu dritt ghall-opinjoni! Eh male! Din tieghek mhux opinjoni?! Hallih ha jsemma’ lehnu!
Indeed.
How about dumping all that “tajnihom l-istipendju” mantra and start talking about “ghallimnihom jahsbu”?
Ah, embarrassing track record there, isn’t it?