Cock-up of the year

Even though I don't think my sense of humour is lacking, I have never looked positively at April Fool jokes in the media. For me, a newspaper pulling the leg of its readers or a broadcasting station doing it to its listeners or viewers tends to undermine the relationship of trust between the medium and its 'clients', even if the first day of April is considered by many reliable newspapers and other media all over the world as a notable acceptable exception.

When a friend of mine sent me a text message with the news that the so-called 'Luqa monument' was to be dismantled temporarily for the Pope's visit, I immediately replied that this piece of 'news' must be an April Fool's joke. I did not change my idea when he told me he had heard it in a Radio 101 news bulletin.

The joke, I thought, was at the expense of the idiots who see nothing but a phallus in the ceramic sculpture that goes by the name of Colonna Mediterranea, the work of one of Malta's foremost ceramicists that was haplessly set up on a roundabout in the outskirts of Luqa.

The artist maintains that his work was never intended to be a phallic symbol but simply "a 3D representation of a symbol that has been used since Egyptian times". Apparently, he did not deign to check what inspired the Egyptians to adopt that symbol in the first place!

In any case, as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it must be a duck.

Now the joke has gone somewhat awry, with the idiots at whose expense the joke was supposedly made insisting they are on the right side of propriety and the idea has even taken the international media by storm.

I can only comment that we live in a mad, mad, mad world. What is even crazier is the fact that the head of the newsroom from where the joke originated was quoted as saying he was glad about the "positive" reaction to the story, adding that "we just made a joke out of it because it's inappropriate that the Pope would pass through there".

It is incredible how this would-be spin doctor attempted to please both sides of the divide: those who really think it is "inappropriate" for the Pope to see that particular work of art and those who - like me - consider such people as just plain silly, if not idiotic.

A joke is a joke and the only "positive reaction" to a joke is a good laugh. Attributing to it an unintended purpose while commenting about an unexpected reaction, is even more stupid than broadcasting the joke in the first place.

I have always thought that we Maltese cannot laugh at ourselves. I remember one occasion when Hector Bruno was doing a stand-up performance at some PN event and obviously his repertoire included a good dose of political gags, with the then Prime Minister, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, being the butt of these jokes.

For various reasons, including his personality and the strange way he was propelled to the country's top-most political post, Mifsud Bonnici was - and still is - very good joke material. Bruno had all those present in stitches with laughter.

Then he decided to conduct an experiment and in his inimitable way he narrated a joke at the expense of Eddie Fenech Adami. The shocked reaction could almost be physically felt. No one laughed, and there was only an almost eerie silence broken by the indescribable noises of low-key twittering.

For the PN supporters, apparently, it was all right to joke about Mifsud Bonnici but outrageous to joke about Fenech Adami. No wonder Bruno never tried it again.

This is one aspect of the Maltese character that irks me: we can laugh at the expense of others but not at our own expense. Most people do not accept jokes at the expense of the political party, band club, football team, or parish that they support, even though they are more than willing to enjoy jokes said at the expense of their 'adversaries'.

Recent events such as the setting up of a Facebook page in the name of Boiler No. 7 and now in the name of the Colonna Mediterranea indicate that, perhaps, the younger generations have shaken off this narrow-minded way of being 'humorous' and the country is maturing to the extent that it can even laugh at itself.

It is therefore somewhat ironic that Malta hit the international headlines with such a bang through a joke - involving the Pope, the artist, the scrupulous, everybody but ourselves - that has gone awry.

The international impact of all this has been truly quite remarkable. I doubt if Malta was ever so much in the world limelight since the Bush-Gorbachev summit in 1989. It makes the €500,000 spent on the Pope's visit a very worthwhile investment.

Putting tiny Malta on the map is no easy job. What would we do without cock-ups?

micfal@maltanet.net