The battle for the seats in Brussels and Strasbourg is over and the Maltese people have spoken. J’accuse’s mission as scourge of the candidates engaged in taking us all for a ride continues. During the election MEP re-candidate for the Nationalist Pick’N’Mix party David Casa was exposed by J’accuse for having cut and pasted his way into the columns of our dailies – in the hope of showing the electors that his was the business of the EU (PNN/EPP – The Cut and Paste Way).
Casa is back – as an MEP – but old habits die hard. His report on the re-election of EPP favourite Barroso to a second term as Commission President is once again rife with cut and paste activity that does not leave much space for original thought or even original reporting. You’d have thought that with a place in the parliament Casa could have strung a few words of his own together in order to report the election. Fat chance – it is easier to rush to the Guardian Online paper and “borrow” most of the text from an article.
Here is Casa’s Indy contribution today: “Barroso’s Second Term“.
And here is Ian Traynor’s report from Strasbourg for the Guardian (Jose Manuel Barroso wins second term as president of European commission). Ian Traynor is not an MEP representing his country but a journalist paid to report the news from the EPP (the Guardian European Editor).
For the last few paragraphs of his article, editor Casa returns to the faithful source of the commission pages: Barroso’s very own summary of his achievements way back in May 2009.
The absolute earth-shattering irony of the last paragraph of Casa’s article is being reproduced here in all it’s ironic glory (my highlight):
And I felt I must conclude this article with Barroso’s own words of unifying wisdom: “As president of the commission, my party is going to be Europe. Anyone who wants can come on board on this exciting journey that is the integration of Europe.”
Un-flipping-believable… the bloody cheek!
Casa’s articles are like modified genius: 99% inspiration 1 % perspiration…. and that’s really stretching the concept of inspiration to the limits!
3 replies on “Casa Editrice”
always amazed how you manage to catch these .. do you read everything single article in every single paper? STILL .. brilliant!! :)
Thanks Alexia. Actually I don’t. My suspicion is only piqued when the wording in an article is evidently the result of a cut & paste job. Casa’s job is not made easier by my interest in hearing what our faithful MEPs are up to in Brussels. From what we can see… nothing much!
He he – Brilliant title to this piece.
Alexia, I would imagine the process goes something like this. J’accuse spots another article by Casa Editrice in The Indy. On a good day the man would have stuffed in a paragraph or two of hackneyed faff of his own (tipo: “We only have to thank the foresight of our great PN visionaries for getting us into the EU”…). J’accuse reads through the cliches and crap and gets to paragraph 3 whose flowing style, contemporary journalistic English (as opposed to Form 2 De La Salle) and originality set off j’accuse’s red alarm. “This can’t be Casa!” j’accuse thinks to himself, “the fuc*** has been at it again!” “Time to expose the mediocre tw*t!”, j’accuse concludes.
And thumbs up to j’accuse too. About time someone started doing some quality control of these guys.