Allan Gatt, Birkirkara
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and the whole truth
Death can magically absolve a man of all his misdeeds. Michael Jackson's magically vanished when he suffered a coronary and now that the same fate has claimed Mike Bongiorno's life he too is riding the crest of a wave of public approbation.
In the Thursday issue of The Times, Charles Xuereb and Enrico Gurioli mourn the showman's passing with two full-length articles, occupying an entire newspaper sheet. As an eulogy, it seemed excessive right from the start and that was before I even started reading it. "Goodbye Mike. The Italian world of media and culture is weeping," blubs Mr Gurioli. "It is crying over the death of an honest man with principles; honest in the way of doing television, honest in his relationship with his viewers and honest with his friends."
Such redoubtable honesty! Is Mr Gurioli paying homage to a latter-day Samaritan who wandered the earth in sackcloth and ashes or a TV presenter who raked in millions of dollars, shilling brand-name goods on Italian national TV?
We really must get out of this pervasive habit of painting human character in soot and whitewash. It may well be true that Mike Bongiorno was a good family man, father and husband, but that is hardly our concern. We must instead limit ourselves to a diagnosis of his public character and an examination of his contribution to the common weal. I believe a fair and balanced report of Mike Bongiorno's legacy would have been far more level-headed and far less cloying.
"The excitement was contagious in its interactive invitation to entice viewers in trying to guess the answer or at least sympathise with one bravu participant against another," simpers Mr Xuereb in his encomium.
Can these commentators be in earnest? Am I alone in seeing Mike Bongiorno's manicured voice, choreographed gestures, rehearsed sound-bites and the canned laughter of his studio audiences for what they really were: an exercise in keeping the people compliant, distracted and suggestible?
If Mike Bongiorno was important, he was important for all the wrong reasons. Here was a man at the vanguard of television, a pioneering technology that started out with a very sinister aim in mind: the creation of dissatisfaction with the old and the outmoded, thus keeping people buying, buying, buying and, therefore, working, working, working to get the money to do so. In other words, its purpose was to keep people enslaved to a work-consume ethic and keep the lucrative war economy on indefinite life-support.
Mike Bongiorno was one of the grandmasters behind this ingenious and seemingly innocuous technology and he lent his friendly voice, kindly gestures and infectious personality to the service of Mammon and all those who could afford his asking price. But Mike Bongiorno's death is of no consequence to his stomping grounds, the corrupt and insane world of television.
His crown is probably already being fought over behind closed doors, in terms and language far more cut-throat than the viewing public is accustomed to glimpsing on quiz shows. Such is the nature of back-room television politics and such is the nature of the society television has helped create.
I ask that this letter be published as a necessary counter-weight to Mr Xuereb's and Mr Gurioli's glutinous accounts of Mike Bongiorno's career, and I beg the indulgence of anyone who believes I have done a disservice to Mike Bongiorno's memory by pronouncing my mind about him.
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Joe Xuereb
Sep 19th 2009, 11:22
The tongue flaps. And then it stiffens. To be buried. Deep in the stomach chamber. Where it meets. The ulcer. And finally interred. With pomp and circumstance. But not necessarily together. Depends on the nature. Of the fame. And the Muse of Mirth one is grateful for. And she moves on. Seeking solace. In another idiom. That is alien to the first. Strange that.
victor zammit
Sep 17th 2009, 08:46
As the late, and great, Ralph Dahrendorf once said about politics that it is the dramatisation of the insignificant. So possibly the mass media being the same about the less significant. Noel Buttigieg Scicluna may not have been all that condescending but he was not wholly off the mark either. And the ‘de mortuis nihil nisi bonum' (nothing but good about the dead’) does not preclude fair comment. We lived with Mike and he grew on us – that is his legacy, and a fine one. Some other media personalities almost as much, but as Fiorello’s kind jibe at the funeral seems to convey – won’t they too deserve a state funeral? What makes for the latter?
Allan Gatt
Sep 16th 2009, 23:29
Mr Camilleri, if I were to write a piece about every bloated, over-rated celebrity who made the news - Maltese or not - I wouldn't even have time to brush my teeth.
I intend to make up the deficit though...in good time. Stay tuned!
Alfred Camilleri
Sep 16th 2009, 20:46
I was surprised and outraged by the reaction by Noel Buttigieg Scicluna towards Mike Bongiorno. He couldn't help taking a dig at Berlusconi in the process.
Incidentally, Dear Sir, who are the people that matter? Would they be only politicians, by the way?
As for Allan Gatt, I do not recall him writing the way he did when appreciations for Maltese personalities appeared in the press. Could it be that for Mr Gatt Maltese personalities deserve all the praise that is showered on them, but non Maltese ones don't?
Allan Gatt
Sep 16th 2009, 15:51
Freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means freedom to criticize and oppose. Life is no excuse. Death is no excuse. Public opinion is no excuse. People have been clapped in irons, tortured, and burnt alive in preservation of this freedom.
Keep up this act of pious hypocrisy, and it will only be in the loss of it that this freedom's value will be recognized.
As for Joe Xuereb's flapping comment, I have this to say: Try and be more disciplined in your thoughts. Your comment could have been pickled in rum for all its coherence. Sit down, relax, and say what you need to say. Let one sentence flow into another.
Joe Tabone-Adami
Sep 16th 2009, 15:38
Two observations, if I be allowed:
a) "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" - Let us forget a dead man's frailties and mention only what was good about him; and,
b) as my late father used to say regarding the popularity of 'celebrities' "it's what the dumdora (substitute that for 'the great unwashed') wants. Full stop.
Noel Buttigieg Scicluna
Sep 16th 2009, 13:17
The letter by Allan stands in sharp contrast to the articles by Xuereb and Gurioli. All three have a right to look differently at the life of Bongiorno. I acknowledge his contribution to Italian TV as well as the likely effect it must have had on ours. But he was not the only star of Italian TV, though perhaps he was one who survived the longest. How many Popes did we have and he was still appearing on TV ?? Like Allan I do question the space given by the Times to cover his death as well I question the hyperbole used in the Maltese Press in describing Mike's career. His achievements will be recalled with his lack of loyalty to RAI when to enrich himself, he moved to help Berlusconi set up his TV empire as a prelude to Berlusconi's entry into politics. Which also explains to me what was behind the ridiculous excess by the Italian Government to give him a State Funeral... belittling for ever all past and future State Funerals for people that matter. But we know that theatrical and meaningless gestures are quite typical of some people.
Leo Bartolo
Sep 16th 2009, 12:11
What did the readers gain from this destructive letter about a person who was loved by millions of televiewers? What did Mr Gatt gain by writing this unjust letter. Freedom of speech, maybe?
Joe Xuereb
Sep 16th 2009, 11:12
I read this letter and thought to myself, this guy is right. Then I looked at the name of the person who wrote it and it looked familiar. Sure, it wasn Allan Gatt, the guy who wrote 'An elegiac piece of propaganda' on 05.09.09. Amazing. Allan Gatt is quite right to draw attention to the propaganda to Mammon. He claims that the photograph accompanying his 'elegiac propaganda' piece was not his choice. It was a very propagandist choice of picture nevertheless.
@ J. Farrugia. As usual, you have it spot on. People who sling mud at the dead could well end up having mud slung at them when their turn comes. If the mud is warranted mud, why not? If, as an atheist and a homosexual, mud is slung at me when I am gone, and I am buried on a rubbish heap, who cares? I will be dead. I will have lived an honest life. And the mud-slinging will reflect more (read stick to) on the mud-slingers than on me, by then a corpse.
J Farrugia
Sep 16th 2009, 10:34
Mr gatt should be forever ashamed of himself. No man is a saint but his trying to trash such a prominent person such as Mike Bongiorno does not go down well with the thousands of his admirers. A saying goes that those who throw dirt at dead persons will have similar treatment.