My attention has been drawn to the fact that last Sunday’s Sundays included a number of references to this blog – mostly thanks to the Great Issue of last week in which J’accuse explored the background and repercussions of Labours employment of Marisa Micallef. Unfortunately I was travelling for most of Sunday and therefore I failed to notice most of these references until of course my dad did point out a few of them, coyly remarking “So, some people DO read your blog after all!”.
Yes they do dad, and here’s the kind of collage that you enjoy so much … it should take your mind off the gloating over Juve’s latest loss and Chelsea and Inter’s latest wins. For the two other readers of this blog, here is a roundup of J’accuse in the news. I will follow Marie Benoit’s advice and slap my left hand as an act of contrition. (Is it always the left that needs slapping Marie? Don’t bother answering, it’s a rhetorical question). Click to continue…
The Hand Slapping Marie Benoit (Marie Benoit’s Diary)
I see that Jacques Rene Zammit has picked up my article – “The Unbearable heaviness of Being Marisa” which was published in First, June 2004 issue. I recall getting severely slapped on the hand by a close relative on the Monday following its publication. Marisa was one of the darlings of the Nationalist tribe at the time. She returned to Malta and claiming all kinds of experience in Britain in the field of social housing she was soon appointed Chairman of the Housing Authority and to quote my article, she served people “mainly from the lower echelons of society”.
Yes JRZ had picked up her article and did so in the post Marisa Revisited (the Benoit Remix). It served well as an eye opener and clear sample of what Labour thought of Marisa prior to the great damascene revelation.
The Blog Referring Noel Grima (Will Labour now turn on social scroungers?)
The blogs, probably most of the opinion pieces in this issue, and possibly most of the comment in the other Sunday papers, all try to speculate about her real reason for joining Labour. Is it genuine, they ask, or is money at the root of it? I will not go there: I will not speculate as to any hidden reason for her ‘conversion’. However, it will be difficult for her to live up to some particularly biting comments she made in her articles, just as it is difficult for her former critics to now move to praise her. (See Jacques’ blog for a particularly vicious attack on her.) Of course, in due time, she may well take some time to write and state what was it that moved her to join Labour.
Like Marie, Noel is referring to the Benoit Remix post. What Noel refers to as a “particularly viscious attack” on Marisa is actually a reference to Marisa’s article as quoted on J’accuse. There was no viscious attack on Marisa from J’accuse (as yet). We do try not to be vicious and tend to prefer the brutal bluntness of the truth. In fact we like to think that most of what J’accuse has done in “the Marisa incident” is really hold up a mirror to the two parties and show them the very roots of their unprincipled ugliness. Which is what the next referrer to J’accuse had done in article he had penned himself for our blog:
The “I told you” Moment from David Friggieri (Whatever Works (Thanks Woody!))
In the light of this weeks’ big news story, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to publish an abridged version of an article I had written for the ‘j’accuse’ blog at the height of last year’s hysterical election campaign. Many people seem to be genuinely surprised – shocked even – by Marisa Micallef’s’ defection from Blue to Red. Quite frankly, they shouldn’t be. While this latest development does have a surreal flavour to it (largely due to the language employed by the former The Independent columnist), in many ways it was bound to happen.
Too true. Too true. The original post is here. There was also a twisted story behind that blog posting that almost got David into a spot of bother thanks to some thick headed interpretation of what David had to say about the perception each tribe has of the other. A hot headed Labourite misread David’s description of the Labour stereotype (in the Nationalist’s mind) as some form of assertion by David. Before you know it an email was doing the rounds accusing David of being so anti-Labourite as to describe them in stereotypical ways. An intelligent reading of David’s post would have immediately noticed the flaw in the email sender’s argument and wide gap in his capabilities of understanding (read David’s corrective note to the email). In the end, all this incident did was prove David’s (and J’accuse’s point) – that tribal reasoning gets us nowhere.
Conclusion
I can see where Marie is going and you’ve got to admire her conclusion to stick to her guns and express disappointment about the appointment of a rank outsider for a sum of money. This disappointment can also be read in the writings of Josanne Cassar and Pamela Hansen. Noel Grima makes a strong point when, while expressing his respect for Marisa Micallef, he queries the utility of making such a big fuss of drawing her over to the labour side. As for David’s point.. well, there is not much to add. Our minds are in perfect sintony on that one. Q.E.D.
