As shallow as a rainwater puddle
Il-gingerbread ta' Michelle: lest ghat-tewkingejfrent ta' Joseph, Michel the Make-Up Artist
Weeks after a university newspaper was banned and its editor reported by the university authorities to the police for publishing material described as obscene, the Progressive Mexxej of the Moviment Gdid took a break from artfully rearranging the tufts on his ras ta’ zaghzugh and moved himself to speak.
Shame that his commitment to hair gel and to eating Michelle’s gingerbread with Michel the Make-Up Artist (see my column last Sunday) and his ‘partner’ the Sorbonne Lecturer (token gays wheeled out to impress his interviewer – “Wow, sir, you have gay friends!”) left him no time to work out what in God’s name he was talking about.
When Muscat spoke last Sunday, after a hiatus in which everyone had given their two cents’ worth except for the leader of the so-called progressives, he hadn’t read the banned piece, he didn’t know the editor’s name, and he was clueless as to the ramifications of the issue.
He didn’t even know that it’s all about a short story which some think is obscene.
He thinks it is about an opinion column, banned because the opinion was ‘wrong’.
On Sunday morning, he sat with Miriam Dalli in the Super One radio studio and yielded to her probing questions: Labour Party hack interviews former Labour Party hack and current Labour Party leader, for Labour Party propaganda show on the Labour Party’s radio station (“So tell me, Miss Flowers, what was it that attracted you to your new fiancé, wheelchair-bound octogenarian billionaire Anthony Black?” “It was his personality and sense of humour.”).
“I’m bringing this up now because we have been told there is the intention of taking this person to court and possibly, God forbid, putting him in prison,” Muscat said.
Oh, so he wasn’t bringing it up on Sunday morning several weeks after the event because Michelle had just read my column, in between baking gingerbread for the token gays and practising her fluent French on her teddy-bear collection (which also starred in that interview; the teddies don’t eat gingerbread, but you never know, they might be gay) and told her husband: “This bitch says here that you claim to be progressive but you’re the only one who’s said nothing about that university ban business. Show her, Joseph, because if you don’t rub that woman’s face in it once and for all, I’m going to deploy another one of those empty brown envelopes bl-arma tal-gvern from the large stash I have hidden inside Pinkie Bear.”
Muscat heads for the living-room and gives the towering pile of teddy-bears a good kick, wondering why it never occurs to his wife that a man might feel a bit emasculated by being forced to live in Goldilocks’ cottage but with no sign of Goldilocks to rev things up a little – unless she was heavily disguised as Michel the Make-Up Artist.
He’s in a bit of a fix because he doesn’t know what his wife was on about back there in the kitchen among the gingerbread. What university business? What was banned?
There’s nobody to ask and he’s too embarrassed to show his wife he’s not up to speed with current progressive events. He’s got no secretary-general and his deputy leaders are merely there for decorative purposes – or they would be, if they were decorative.
So he thinks that maybe he should start seeing some return on his investment and he calls the Labour Party’s recently acquired useful idiot. “Oh,” she tells him, “a student is going to be sent to prison for publishing an opinion in a university newsletter”.
Muscat works himself up into high dudgeon. This is a free country! You can’t send people to prison for their opinions! This is 2010! He is progressive! The others are conservative! Maybe he should say something! When did this happen?
He goes on Miriam Dalli’s show and rants about how you can’t have students sent to prison for their opinions. He bangs on progressively, hoping that somebody will slip him a note with the editor’s name on it, but nobody does because this is the Labour Party.
When he walks out of the recording studio, a young man in a very tight T-shirt and low-slung jeans turns briefly away from his computer screen and says: “Actually, it wasn’t an opinion piece, Dr Muscat. It was a short story. He’s not being prosecuted for his opinion, but for publishing obscene material. I thought you should know. And by the way, his name is Mark Camilleri and the newspaper he edits is called Ir-Realta. It’s a left-wing paper – you know, progressive.”
Muscat smiles his thanks, tries to give him a high five, realises he looks like a prat, thinks better of it, and moves outside. “Who is he?” he says with barely contained aggression to a couple of hovering useful idiots, the one who cost rather a lot of donations miz-zghir and the other one who molests rubber puppets on Teletubi.
“Get rid of him. He’s a smart-ass. And if I’m going to sell myself as young, I can’t have 20-year-olds hanging around this place with their snake-hips poking out of their jeans.”
“But mexxej,” they say. “We’re about to abolish the post of secretary-general. We can’t abolish the post of IT administrator too. Maltastar is bad enough as it is.”
Let’s leave that bunch of ferrets snapping at each other in their sack and put Labour’s tosh about censorship and the police into perspective.
The day before yesterday I spent the greater part of the morning in a magistrate’s court packed with newspaper editors and writers. It was a criminal libel session. In criminal libel, as opposed to a civil suit, you don’t sue the person who you believe has libelled you. You file a request with the police, and then the police prosecute, in a criminal case.
With just two exceptions, all of us – journalists, editors and even one cabinet minister – were there because Labour politicians had asked the police to prosecute us for the things we’d said or written about them. In my case, the Labour politicians are Anglu Farrugia and Dom Mintoff.
Anglu Farrugia asked the police to prosecute me because I wrote an article listing the reasons why he should never be made Labour Party leader, at the time he stood for election for that post.
Dom Mintoff set the police on me because I raised questions about how and why he got almost half a million liri in compensation for having a power station built next to his decrepit weekend retreat.
So much for the Labour Party and censorship; we’re talking about opinions here, not obscene material. They’d be well at home in China, from where even Google is pulling out now because it’s had enough.
If you’re wondering why Joseph Muscat never spoke against the ban on the performance of Stitching, and why it was weeks before he said something (wrong) about Mark Camilleri and that short story, wonder no more.
The Labour Party wants to be seen as progressive, but it has had a long love affair with oppression and continues to see its value as a tool with which to silence opposition and condition actual or potential critics.
If people like me are forced to spend whole mornings in court undergoing criminal prosecution for saying what we think and know to be true about Labour politicians, some of us might just stop telling it like it is.
After all, whether the case goes in our favour or not, we’ve still been forced to waste a lot of time and money.
It won’t put me off. It will, in fact, have precisely the opposite effect. Toni Abela, for example, is suing me for calling him a clown, which makes calling him a clown and drawing attention to his clownish escapades even more fun than it was before.
But some writers will think twice and that’s exactly what Labour wants.
If Labour means what it says about censorship, it should start by issuing instructions to its politicians not to request the police to prosecute those who criticise and mock them.
Until then, all of Labour’s limited and late talk about censorship issues is just so much……gingerbread.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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Chapeau.
Why the Balzanish style? Is it in keeping with the title?
[Daphne – No. Believe it or not, the bits about the gingerbread, Michelle’s teddy-bear mountain in the living-room and Michel the Make-Up Artist are true, taken from a real, live interview in First magazine. And so is the bit about Miriam Dalli and the Sunday morning interview, complete with an actual, real quote from Joseph Muscat. Something else: Balzan can’t write (but I can).]
Daph, what you REALLY seem to have missed is the bit where it said something along the lines of Michelle being kind enough to bake the Christmas treats (and, presumably, put up the Christmas decorations too) in November specifically for the so-called interview.
Oh, and you also REALLY must have missed out the photo of the over-laden table … Overladen with unnecessary crockery that is, such as soup bowls/cereal bowls/mugs/whatever they were, along with tea cups, unless, of course, they were having the cakes/biscuits for breakfast.
Dawk tat-tieg u jintuzaw biss ghall-okkazzjoni importanti ‘en masse’. Matul il-bqija tas-sena jibqghu on displej fil-vetrina.
Too true. And the evening dress – at breakfast! An early bird indeed (one that will probably turn out to be an albatross round her husband’s neck).
Thanks. I’ll sleep better.
One of the best opinion pieces.
“Toni Abela, for example, is suing me for calling him a clown, which makes calling him a clown” … and there I was, thinking that he had sued you/was suing you for calling him an ghoxx.
[Daphne – He threatened to sue me for calling him an ghoxx, and when the summons arrived, it was for calling him a clown. I suppose he was too embarrassed to call a gynaecologist as an expert witness, to examine him and say that no, he is not an ghoxx.]
This is where the Maltese and English languages divert in the respective meaning of the same word. Calling somebody an ghoxx in Maltese is like calling someone a prick in English. While calling someone a cunt in English is like calling somebody a zobb in Maltese. Different cultures, different interpretations.
[Daphne – Actually, not to sound like an expert on expletives or anything, but ‘cunt’ as an insult is equivalent to ‘poxt’ not ‘zobb’. The connotations in ‘cunt’, which like ‘ghoxx’ is always used for a man, are of somebody mean and nasty who screws people over to a higher degree than somebody who is a ‘prick’, which is used for those whose behaviour is not so much mean and nasty as merely egocentric. Cunts cheat you out of your hard-earned savings. Pricks don’t turn up for dates. Ghoxx, on the other hand, is used either for men who are suckers (‘Kemm int ghoxx, thalli l-dak jirkeb minn fuqek’ or for somebody who is half-assed in what he does ‘Arah, qisu ghoxx, jaghmel kollox nofs lehja’). I would say that ‘prick’ and ‘zobb’ are equivalent in terms of insults as well as biologically.]
Just want to add that this blog is the best thing going on the internet … for me at least.
[Daphne – Thank you.]
Not to sound like a pedantic prick or anything, but “cunt” is also used for women. As in: “That scheming cunt”. Modern variations include the terms “minge-box” and – oh sorry, the doorbell just rang. It’s my friend Snørri, a lecturer in Icelandic philology at the University of Central Sneffels and his trans-sexual partner Alizondo-Kylie, a professional bricklayer and D’n’B DJ.
And in the land where everything is bigger and longer, someone mean and nasty is called “motherfucker”.
Daphne, did you call him a clown and an ghoxx? Because if you called him just an ghoxx and he’s accusing you of calling him a clown, it will be an easy win wouldn’t it?
[Daphne – I called him both a clown and an ghoxx. It was the ghoxx that maddened him, but when he felt obliged to deliver on his threat to sue, he said in court that it was the clown business that bothered him. I don’t blame him. Imagine standing up in court and discussing the ins and outs of being called an ghoxx, when you’re deputy leader of the Labour Party.]
I can just about picture you in court ‘Your Honour, I never called him a clown, I just called him a cunt, which is not the same thing, so his allegation is unfounded’. Case dismissed.
Even objecting to the term ‘clown’ is rather silly and actually proves that he is one.
Is it true that the World Clown Association is considering legal action against you for ridiculing their skills?
Madame, I am quite grateful for this language refresher course.
Daphne, a British expression from a Canadian– Brilliant!
The one who molests rubber puppets – here he is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4xxAMer_V8
Daphne, If I may change the topic. I saw Dr. Franco Debono this week on Dissett being grilled like a steak. Reno Bugeja used the right flame to draw out Dr. Debono’s confused thoughts. He did a good job of showing just how unstable Dr.Debono is in political life.
Now I understand why Dr. and Mrs Gonzi pushed their personal schedule aside and ran to his house late in the evening.
I think the inner PN circle knew about this strange characteristic in Dr. Debono and were quietly working hard to find a replacement for his district. The “south of south” is just a convenient excuse, a ploy.
His 15 minutes of fame came, but the truth is that his negatives will linger on for a long time. I can’t see him reelected next time. I think it is a reasonable assumption that his PN-leaning constituents will not trust him again.
Positive publicity for scoring the goal that helps my team and country win an important match is preference to negative publicity for arguing with my coach.
In football circles a new adjective has been added to the normal lingo: a la Debono.
In fact I had been wondering why he never mentioned the ban on “Stitching”. Now I know. Michelle probably thinks she is Martha Stewart.
[Daphne – I doubt it. I would say that gingerbread was just another PR stunt for the benefit of the interviewer and his readers, like Michel the Make-Up Artist and his other half the (gay) Sorbonne lecturer dropping by ‘accidentally’ and serving the twin purpose of showing that the Muscats have gay friends and speak French. Who’s going to eat all that gingerbread in a household of two adults on a weight-control diet and two toddlers who, like most other toddlers, almost certainly can’t stand the stuff? I’ll admit that she’s clearly into the cosy-granny-smith-homemaking-cottage look, but it’s about time she noticed that photographing her husband in that context is a really bad idea. He looks like a cuckoo in that particular nest, like he’d rather be anywhere else but there: in a New York loft surrounded by admirers of either sex, for example, and certainly not in that whole chintzy, kitschy-cutsie, kids ‘n’ teddies ‘n’ gingerbread environment.]
He reminds me of Adrian Mole.
Il-lasta tal-ixkupa tkelmet
[Daphne – Mank li kont ghadni qisni lasta tal-ixkupa, hanini. Dak kien zmien. U issa n-nisa kolla ma jieklux u immorru l-gym biex forsi isiru bhal ma kont jien fl-istat naturali tieghi, meta kontu tghajruni lasta tal-ixkupa. Issa mhux moda tkun qisek lasta? Sorry – toothpick, ghax in-nisa Maltin daqxejn qosra.]
“…..like he’d rather be anywhere else but there: in a New York loft surrounded by admirers of either sex, for example….”
Very good observation: ‘someone’ was overheard saying that if we eventually do get divorce we shall, in all probability, see a man fleeing Goldilocks cottage.
For many of us living abroad your blog is the highlight of our day. Sad characters like Mintoff, Bezzina and Farrugia are nothing but reminders of a distant miserable past, of a youth spent worrying about abused democracy in my country of birth. Clowns and c u next tuesdays are but a few of the names I have gladly called them over the years.
Rover, even for ex-pats living here in Malta, Daphne’s blog is a highlight of the day. The sad idiots she so aptly describes continue to amuse us even in present times.
Thanks for this funny, perceptive analysis Daphne. It’s fascinating to see, however, that several people (like the editor of the Sunday Circle) are being wooed big time by Gingerbread Man while others see right through him and can’t stomach his smug face. I wonder how this particular cookie crumbles.
To be fair, calling him a clown was quite insulting, to clowns that is.
Rover – Daphne’s blog starts my day. It’s my fix, and without it I cannot function! thank you Daph, please please keep them coming…..
@ Matt, go and sip your vodka. We are having Southern Comfort.