They’ve turned the premiership into a family project for personal advancement
If the prime minister doesn’t instruct his wife to get out of the mix (instruct her in a professional capacity, I hasten to add, and not as a husband) she is going to end up irritating so many people so very fast that it will become seriously problematic.
That ridiculous feature spread in Style magazine, posing in different outfits with her children in naff ballet clothes, was embarrassing, compromising and unnecessary.
Both in the way she looked and what she said, she came across to the reader as a hyper-pushy woman from nowhere, scheming through the smiles, who couldn’t believe her incredible good fortune (as she sees it) or the fact that she’d finally arrived (ditto).
She looked totally and absolutely out of place, photographed in different locations at Villa Francia – like a day tourist posing near the sights, or a guest at a tacky wedding in a beautiful old villa rented out for receptions.
We know we are very lucky, she told her interviewer with reference to their entire family, children included, “and we are not going to waste a single minute of these five years”.
That came out so very wrong. But it reveals their true sentiments. She was specific, too, about the decision to become party leader and prime minister having been a joint one – which came out terribly wrong as well. And she said that everything is done as a family, even now that the pater familias is the PM. That sounded really wrong.
Mr and Mrs Michelle Muscat might not have noticed this yet, but Malta doesn’t like prime ministerial families and has no tradition of them for that very reason. We are resolutely European, not American.
We don’t even think it necessary for our prime ministers to have a wife, let alone a family, and while we think that a family is good because it gives the prime minister consolation, comfort, counsel and balance, we don’t want to see that family or have it stuffed down our throats.
We like seeing a little of the wife here and there, adding a bit of a nice touch and softening her husband’s image, but the thing about Mrs Muscat is that people pick up on the fact that she is the man in the unit, largely because her husband looks problematically unmasculine and that makes her look like the controlling boss by comparison.
Maybe that’s why she uses that smile like a weapon, and those ‘crying’ eyes: she needs to hype up her femininity to make her husband look like a real man. But it’s not working. What works in Opposition does not work once you have power. The dynamics with the electorate are completely different.
When prime ministerial wives and children are stuffed in electors’ faces, European electors don’t say, ‘Wow, how cute’. They say, ‘There they go, having one hell of a free ride and a five-year party off our backs. We didn’t elect the wife and children.’
So the wife and children know to keep a low profile, and the wives especially at least pretend to work for a living and most times actually do.
But not Mrs Michelle Muscat, who told her interviewer that she’s having so much busy fun being the wife of the prime minister that she doesn’t even have time for her hobby of making jewellery, let alone time to work. That is not only a stupid thing to say, because it is patently untrue, but it is also downright insulting to all those Maltese women who not only work a full day for a salary, but do the shopping before they go to the office and do the cooking and housework when they get back.
Perhaps Mrs Muscat never noticed that the wives of all recent British prime ministers worked/work still and that one British prime minister was actually a wife herself (and also the mother of twins). Having twins and being a wife didn’t stop her being the prime minister herself.
This is hardly the liberal and progressive example a prime minister’s wife should be setting in 2013. Mrs Gonzi belongs to a generation of women who did not work once they started raising a family. Mrs Muscat does not. She should at least pretend to work, with a dabbling career, so as not to look like somebody freeloading off her husband’s position.
And if her husband is going to succeed in his aim of encouraging more women into the workforce, those two have to lead by example.
Another word of advice (and this is professional): those magazine photographs were photoshopped to the point where the results were laughable. Photoshopping in these situations is normal, but not to that extent. So much was shaved off Mrs Muscat’s hips and thighs, and added to the length of her legs, while the top bit was completely redone to look gamine, that they looked like Mrs Muscat’s (Photoshopped) head on somebody else’s body entirely.
We all know that Mrs Muscat does not wear a size 6 skirt. No women of 40 do unless they are ill, have an eating disorder, or were born of south-east Asian parents. We also know because we see Mrs Muscat on a regular basis on the television and in unexpurgated DOI pictures. So why pretend? It just looks silly and very, very insecure.
So please, let’s not exaggerate.
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“…but the thing about Mrs Muscat is that her husband looks problematically unmasculine…”
Ah, probably that explains why Muscat promised “the most feminist government” in our history.
Mrs Michelle Muscat longed for this since the days she was a personal secretary to the than Prime Minister Alfred Sant.
Mrs & Mr prime minister.
What’s this about her not having time to work? Isn’t she on our payroll?
It seems to me that the Muscats are on our payroll.
You are right about the photoshopping bit. Mrs Muscat’s hips are very wide.
[Daphne – Yes, and it’s her skeletal structure, not fat, which means that even if she stops eating for a year that’s not going to change. That’s not a problem, it’s absolutely normal. Which is why it is stupid to pretend otherwise, especially when you’re out and about every day.]
As for the freeloading, it has been said many times a priori in this blog – la jitilhu ser jiffangaw. And they are.
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130616-mitt-jum-rutina-dida
If Michelle Muscat does not have time to work, why was she employed with the OPM’s secretariat?
Is that the Twenty Thousand Dollar question?
I thought she was employed at the OPM She was on the list of the secreteriiat of the Prime Minister wasn’t she?
She has her own office at Villa Francia.
Labour people were always complaining that they couldn’t afford to buy the bare necessities, however their ‘role model’ said in Style magazine that she loves shopping in New York and that her favourite designer is Chanel.
F.A.K.E. Just like her ‘smile’.
Designer? I hope for her sake she doesn’t think Chanel is still alive.
She meant the English Channel.
Really brings previous commentaries regarding Soleil and Etoile into perspective.
Who knows in how many other Maltese delegations abroad we’ll see them and Mrs Muscat – out of place – for no other reason than for them to have a free holiday and be involved so as ‘not to waste a single minute’ of their ‘good fortune’.
Well said.
What comes out clearly through her words, “we are going to make the most of these five years”, is the sheer greed of the woman: we are going to make sure that we take as much as we can in the next five years.
Miskina, she would be a social climber if she could even reach the first rung.
What she is a wannabe with no class or style, and absolutely no conversation, grace or sophisticated manners, and what she fails to understand is that just because she is the PM’s wife it does not mean she is going to get any.
She just doesn’t have what it takes, despite the money and effort spent trying.
She is surrounded by the nouveaux riches and by to-the-manor-born suck-ups, which means she still thinks it’s all about wearing Bulgari and Cavalli, talking about Chanel being your favourite designer and about how you love to shop in New York.
Try-hard.
She’s at it again. This woman never learns. Go to the link below.
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130616-mitt-jum-rutina-dida
Mrs Muscat also told us that she loves shopping in New York. Given that she has no income of her own, is that how she spends the money her husband the prime minister pays himself for the use of his personal car?
She has not yet made up her mind on what she wants to be when she grows up – Jackie Kennedy, Eva Peron or Carla Bruni.
Isn’t Mrs Muscat supposed to have a job at OPM? Has she forgotten about it or am I under the wrong impression?
She does ‘voluntary work’ for which she has availed herself of the use of Villa Francia. L’etat, c’est moi.
Possibli Michelle ghadha ma rrejalizatx lihi l-mara tal-Prim Ministru u li trid tahseb qabel ma taghmel xi haga u titkellem?
Fejn hi s-serjeta’? Din qed tahseb li qed titkellem ghand tal-grocer? jew mal-hbieb f’xi coffee morning?
“Lil din hobbuha, ghaliex hi thobbkom”.
So much for ‘5 years of fun ahead’
As if any respectable man would say something of the sort regarding his wife.
“Lil din ” Din min hi ? il qatusa, il kelba ? Bahx ghal ahar sur prim ministru.
These people just do not understand or grasp common manners or duties of a PM’s wife.
Mrs Muscat thinks she is now celebrity – once a chav you remain a chav.
Tista tipprova u tipprova, imma sa hemm tasal.
Most probably she is expecting some product endorsment deal, which she would take without any hesitation..