toni sant – toni sant’s blog

Toni was probably bored of blogging by the time the first critical mass of bloggers had formed (or as Gybexi put it “feeeetħu blooog”). Toni turned slowly from detached blogger to a regular on the scene thanks to his “Muzika Mod Iehor” podcast that turned out to be much more of a regular occasion than his random spurts of blog posts. Whether he likes it or not Toni remains a reference point in the blogosfera …. the Simpsons have Apu in his Kwik-E-Shop and we have Toni, with his Muzika-Mod-Iehor….

Jacques’s Earned a Day Off
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In thinking about this seemingly meaningless milestone for J’accuse I keep coming back to two central ideas:

1. Just like s/he who laughs last, it’s irrelevant that I started my own blog before J’accuse. To many it seems like my blog is no longer active simply because I no longer use it to get things off my chest or comment about things that few really care about.

2. This milestone is not as meaningless as it seems at face value. Or is it?

Perhaps it’s like the old fable of the tortoise and the hare. Perhaps it isn’t. I mean, the J’accuser is certainly no tortoise and yet here we are all these years later and he’s still on the frontline of the Maltese blogosphere. Plied with enough red wine, I’d even be tempted to say that J’accuse is the Maltese blogospere, particularly in light of the fact that the rise of social media babble through FB and the like has rendered the elaborate art of blogging more irrelevant than it ever really was to most readers.

In spite of all this, to my mind there’s no doubt that blogging is a privilege that has come to all free minded individuals who no longer need an intremediary to get their voices heard. Whether anyone cares to listen is a whole other matter, of course. I am dis/heartened (delete as applicable, depending on the situation) by the fact that some good points raised by people who have traditional platforms to present their ideas from fall by the wayside as if they were never uttered in public anyway, regardless of the communication platform they use.

One such such fabulous pronouncement was made recently by Lou Bondi and others – i.e. political parties in Malta should not take up any of the radio and tv spectrum for their propaganda machines. It is one point where Bondi, KMB, and Franco Debono agree fully. Were I as prolific a blogger as the J’accuser (or at least as much as I was back when blogging was new to the Maltese blogsphere) I would have probably made much of this ideological u-turn by one of Malta’s political babble masters and some the most maginalized mainstream politicans in recent memory. As things stand, however, I think any intervention from me (or any other blogger) would have been as effective as celebrating whatever milestone we’re marking for J’accuse right now.

Having said all this, I’m now off to rewatch the 500th epidsode of The Simpsons, which declares itself as “the most meaningless milestone of all!” as soon as you see the series logo on your screen.