Tag: letters

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Mediawatch

T.G.I.T.T.C.B

In case you are wondering that stands for “Thank God It’s The Times Comments Board”. In the good old days of early blogging when online newspapers merely reproduced their daily content without a hint of interactivity it was a J’accuse pastime to pick on the weak and deserving – famous among which was the Dame of the Grammatically Incorrect a.k.a. Lorna Vassallo.

Our TGIL section (Thank God It’s Lorna for the uninitiated) flourished in accordance with the Dame’s latest outbursts. Nowadays, thanks to the democratisation of the comment boards – what with online papers vying for the biggest goof allowed to splatter his thoughts to all and sundry under a fitting pseudonym, the sport is a bit like shooting on the Red Cross.

Be that as it may, it does not mean that some sport may not be had with the more prolific of commentators (who incidentally persist in arrogating the moniker of “Bloggers” to their thick selves). Where better to begin than the arduous Frans A. Said from the Times? Here he is commenting on the court hearing of the hit-and-run case in Qawra. We accord him the Lorna Treatment (i.e. my bracketed comments in red).

 

Mr FRANS H SAID

Today, 15:37

I am a frequent visitor to the said area (said area being Qawra – Frans does stick to the Rumpole of the Old Bailey style of writing in order to feel more self-satisfied and pompous when he presses send). Excessive speed is the order of the day (Għamillu Excessive Speed bil-bajd u bacon), any time of the day (Qawra – the city that never slows down). Black exhaust is part of the idyllic scene (decide man – is it idyllic or is it full of black exhaust? Would Manet or Monet have painted Black Exhaust into their landscapes to give it that “idyllic touch”? Et In Qawra Ego). Excessive radio and silencers, but our police are deaf. (This one is worthy of a Lorna Vassallo Prize – the cumulative effort of trying to complain about too many things at once has the effect of nullifying Frans’ argument. Picture (a) Excessive Radio: What is that exactly? Like too many stereos strewn on the kerb? Is he asking for the deliberalisation of the radio waves? (B) Excessive Silencers: Again. Thinking before typing might help Frans. Is this a car that has 20 silencers? If it does, doesn’t it make it very silent? I know he probably means pimped silencers that make more noise but hey who am I to get into Frans Said’s head?And finally (c) the police are deaf: Sorry? Somebody has swallowed an excessive dose of stupid pills today. Let us begin by saying that if the force has decided to become an equal opportunities employer then so be it. But here the complaint seems to be linked – the fact that all the non-sensical phrases combine to one sentence make is a pointer. So checklist time: (a) excessive radio (Bad) (b) excessive silencers (still mysteriously bad) = Conclusion : BUT THE POLICE ARE DEAF. As an illiterate Maltese once asked his English private lessons teacher: because?)

Parking on handicapped slots (OK So Frans is angry but bear with me. What exactly is a handicapped slot? Is it a wrongly painted parking space – a trapezoid parallelogram perhaps?) , but the wardens only appear like rats and disappear again. (And if handicapped slots were not enough, here comes the Gunter Grass of Maltese bloggers (sic). The warden is a rat. Discuss. Does the problem consist of the fact that the warden is a rat (the bastard) or that he disappears (may I point out that the disappearance is repetitive – hence the need to append the word “again” to the end of an already useless sentence).
It is in places like these that speed cameras are required not on the Burmarrad Road (what if they do both frans?). But the Local Council can earn more from Burmarrad than in high tourist areas (the King of Non-Sequiturs. Again we are having problems visualising some of the concepts. What is a High Tourist Area? Is it like a High Elf in Tolkien’s world? Do they walk on stilts? Or is the area itself on some form of plateau?)

But who cares (Delirium sets in just as he was getting hot. He’s tired now and has lost the “question mark” key on his keyboard). The parents do not, as otherwisde they would have hidden the car keys (I’m dying here. The caring parent hides the car keys. Should I really comment?) Who bought such an expensive car/ (Who indeed? The rant against handicapped slots, deaf policemen, excessive radios, excessive silencers, misplaced speed cameras and high tourist areas ends in a very investigative non-sequitur: who bought such an expensive car. Frans’ levels of exhaustion have reached their climax. The question (that gets a slash instead of a point of interrogation) is probably prefaced and followed by a million thoughts that did not find their erratic way from overheated brain to question-mark deficient keyboard. Sadly we’ll never know where the final rhetoric came from).

Finally, do not worry, eventually he will get a suspended sentence, his driving licence (which in any case he does not possess) will be suspended for a few months, and Bob’s your uncle. (What? Me? Worry? No driving licence to suspend and yet Frans thinks it will be suspended. He had to add the “Bob’s your uncle” at the end of the letter. The phrase is currently vying with that other all time favourite “tell it to the marines” as the most uselessly overused phrase among Maltese commentators.)

This has been J’accuse deciphering Frans Said so you don’t have to.

Q. What do you tell a deaf policeman in Qawra who is helping a rat warden issue a ticket to the man who has just spread more radios and silencers across the road?

A. Tell him anything. He can’t hear you.

 

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Mediawatch

Gonzi Condemns Plategate (and its babies)

Prime Minister Gonzi’s letter to the Times is a rarity by local political terms. It takes quite a provocation for a PM to put pen to paper and express his thoughts in a letters page on one of the local rags. Foreign leaders are wont to this kind of behaviour although more often than not it is a representative from the government leader’s office (the cursèd spokesperson) who will perform the necessary duties or clarifications. On several occasions, foreign leaders have been known to take up column space in reputable papers with their wisdom or in their own defence. From Sarkozy to Blair to most Italian leaders it is quite a normal act to follow.

What was strangely interesting about Prime Minister Gonzi’s letter was not simply the form (a letter not an article) which could simply explained by the concept of answering like with like but the reason for this foray into the letters pages while wearing the hat of prime minister. PM Gonzi had been disturbed by a badly constructed accusation in a previous letter, or so it seemed if your attention was alerted to the issue by the PM’s letter.

If like me, you worked backwards – checking out what caused our PM’s foray – you discovered firstly that there were actually two letters using the title referred to by the PM (Upholder of Values or Downright Bigots). The first was by a JBB (Joseph Bonnett Balzan – and not the regular j’accuse reader) and the other by the erstwhile scourge of nationalist writings Mr Eddie Privitera. You needed further clues as to who exactly PM Gonzi was referring to since he had omitted to distinguish between letter (1) and letter (2).

Which led you to the quote lifted from the letter. Dr Gonzi had taken umbrage in particular to this phrase: ““… taken of the law into his hands with fatal consequences…”. Which is more of an unfinished phrase and a misquote to be honest. The full quote, not to take things out of context should have been:

The rebel boy must thank his lucky stars that we are living in a somewhat more enlightened time than two decades ago, though occasionally the news reaches us that an estranged husband has taken the law into his hands with fatal consequence for the adulterer

Now Bonnett Balzan’s letter is an illustration of anything but the “enlightened times” that he refers to and the author is a perfect example of conservative, ignorant bigotry (how’s that for heavy language). Had I been the PM I would have found many more phrases to object to than the one I just quoted – particularly the veiled references to Islam at the end of the letter. Apart from that Bonnett Balzan’s lingo is astonishingly similar to much of the crap that passes for intelligent discussion on blog comment boards nowadays.

The curious incident of the partial quotation waters down the import of Gonzi’s reaction. At the end of the day what the PM actually quotes can mean a myriad other things and is not really a jibe at “means justifies the end for politicians” as Dr Gonzi would have us believe. Bonnett Balzan, speaking from his stylite pulpit, is simply reminding us of the not too infrequent recourse to violent means taken by husbands who have discovered an adulterer in their midst. Stoning anyone?

Bonnett Balzan’s condescending bullshit is just that. All the “rebel boy”, “adulterer”, “honorable” lingo makes Bonnett stand out as a miserable version of Malta’s conservativism without the need of a Prime Minister going out of his way to point that out. So what was Gonzi’s point I hear you ask?

Well. It is baffling. Why react?  More importantly why misquote?  After all Bonnett B is a fervent (never a more appropriate word) admirer of the “job-creating Prime Minister” and not your average Eddie Privitera. The title of the letter should give us a clue: “In favour of mature debate”. Really? Where has the PM and his office been the last few years? Something must be on his mind now. He was quoted by Maltatoday as having said that “political discourse is degenerating” to which the J’accuse facebook reply was “about time someone noticed”.

Then there is the business of the misquote. It is deliberate. It is deliberate because the PM then leads on to the catholic lesson of the day: “Whatever the circumstances, I will never endorse an approach where “the end justifies the means”, even when the end is a noble cause.” Presumably he would never backstab political allies on the eve of an election after a pro-EU campaign conducted hand in hand. Or presumably Dr Gonzi is reminding people like Bonnett Balzan that he will not participate in pontificating bigotry.

Then PM Gonzi went on to issue a blanket condemnation. A sort of veiled fatwa from the state’s head:

I condemn all hatred expressed in all circumstances and reiterate my appeal to all concerned to keep political language within the bounds of what should be acceptable in a mature democratic society.

Which should really get some blogs thinking. Mature? Now where have I heard that word before.