Adrian Vassallo had a good point to make on the subject of pornography even if the way he made it caused many to fly off the handle; flights included a call for his resignation from the Labour Party.
That he expressed himself the way he did - that he would rather live in Iran and riot in the street - should not have been taken literally, whatever emphasis he placed on the matter, but rather as a gauge of the strength of his feelings on the matter. I am in sympathy with his fears of a creeping pornographic culture, if not with his geographically alarming choice of alternative residence.
As nothing is profane any more, or rather, as the profane runs the risk of becoming sacred, which will never do for the profane, a story about Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the company's decision to keep pornography off its iPads and iPhones (whatever these mean) may be of some interest to those who pooh-pooh its effects. When a blogger criticised the move, the CEO e-mailed back that Apple's standards were meant to liberate consumers, giving them "freedom from programmes that steal your private data", "freedom from programmes that trash your battery" and "freedom from porn".
In Apple's case, the CEO was accused of "imposing his morality" by refusing Americans the delights of pornography (the pursuit of happiness?) - never mind that anybody so minded in the States, and elsewhere, does not need Apple to provide it. Now Microsoft has announced that its Windows Phone 7 Marketplace (whatever this means) will no longer provide content of "images that are sexually suggestive or provocative... or even content "that a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content".
For all those Vassallo baiters, Colleen Carrol Campbell, author, TV and radio host, and a former presidential speechwriter, has pointed to a dossier drawn up by the Witherspoon Institute, 'The Social Costs of Pornography', which shows how pornography, a $13 billion industry in America, has impacted on that country and what an addiction it has become for countless adult men and women, youngsters and teenagers.
The costs range, Campbell wrote, "from the psychological damage and health risks incurred by 'performers' trapped in the skin trade to the broken marriages and sexual dysfunctions suffered by adults who participate in it vicariously, and the general coarsening of a society that treats sex as a spectator sport and women's bodies as just another consumer item". For porn freedom-fighters, none of this seems to matter.
Vassallo also expressed concern about pay-TV pornographic channels in hotels. The reaction of one prominent hotelier was that we should refrain from using "the high moral approach on visitors to our island who may have differing values on the matter"; while another commented that pay-TV pornographic channels were in high demand from its corporate clients. That's all right, then.
On the matter of "the high moral approach", I wonder why it is preferable to adopt a low one, whether the influx of tourists will dry up in the absence of pay-TV porn channels in our hotel bedrooms; whether such channels are to be deemed a human right; whether if a satanic group asked for accommodation where they may practise their devilry (freedom to worship, you see) a hall would be placed at its disposal? Ah, but such as these do not have a $13 billion industry to back the group. As for corporate clients, the implication that they cannot do without their daily fix is too absurd to warrant a reaction.
More handles were flown from when Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo remarked that what went on in bedrooms was the government's business, when it was clear he did not mean this in the sense that a voyeuristic government should post peeping-toms in every bedroom in the land. He was simply making a reasonable non-Big Brother point that what goes on in some bedrooms, or passes for bedrooms, sometimes had repercussions for which the government, through our taxes, has to pay.
€1.5 billion is a lot of money
There has been substantially good news on the investment front; to take but three examples: the negotiations currently under way with Horizon Terminals Limited to set up a €300 million oil terminal in Malta; a private sector-government initiative to invest in the region of €200m in what is being called the White Rocks Sports and Leisure project; the purchase in the first six months of 2010 of €636m worth of stocks and bonds offered by private enterprise (€234m) and the government (€400m); all this at a time when the rest of the eurozone is not smelling roses and austerity measures are the order of the day in Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.
British commentators, who should have enough worries about their own country's currency and economic woes, love predicting the impending doom of the euro. But this apart and whatever else they don't do, these massive investments I detailed out add up to more than €1.5 billion and signal the confidence of overseas investors in the country and that of their local counterparts in private enterprise. Farsons' offer of €15 million stock was wolfed down and heavily oversubscribed before you could tell your stockbroker, "Buy".
Point is, Lawrence Gonzi's government has displayed an impressive and creative ability in its determination to implement the vision it held up to the electorate in 2008 - and before that - it is now adding Vision 2015+ to its Vision 2015. In other words, its eyes are fixed on the future while the opposition's remains for the most part fixed on the ground.
That said, and politics being the art they sometimes are not, it would be inappropriate, to put it mildly, for the government to ignore the vulnerability all governments are heir to. Sometimes, perhaps even oftentimes, the slings and arrows directed at it, may feel like outrageous misfortune, like attempts to trip it up on the way to the achievement of its vision; no matter.
Alfred Sant's opposition in the run-up to the 1996 election concentrated hard on hammering home the perception of corruption. Never mind that once it took over the government and set up a dozen investigations conducted by ex-Attorney-General Edgar Mizzi, none returned a 'guilty' verdict. Joseph Muscat is following in his master's footsteps, which may be foolhardy but that remains to be seen. Still, Gonzi's cabinet and parliamentary group should resist the temptation to ignore accusations made against the government merely because these are made by the opposition.
The best resistance must come, as I remarked weeks ago, from a total commitment to the injunction that not only Caesar but his wife too must be above reproach. In today's world, Caesar has many wives. This does not mean that anything done wrong by members of the administration requires the head of a minister; it does mean that every minister and parliamentary secretary should require of senior members within and without the administration an understanding that they form part of Caesar's concubinage.
Obama's losing it
Six weeks after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico US President Barack Obama uttered the funniest lines of his presidency when it dawned on him, long after sunrise, that his slow reaction to America's worst environmental disaster was a no-no with the American public.."I don't sit around just taking to experts because this is a college seminar. We (we?) talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick". Still waiting for "the best answer" after six weeks? For most people, two asses were available, BP's and, as he remained inactive while the oil gushed out, his own.
As late as Day 39, when he visited Louisiana and was photographed squatting, running fouled sand on Fourchon Beach through his fingers, he was reported as saying: "I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down". This was vintage Obama, noble to a fault; the buck stops here, he thought, would go down well, but he failed to gauge just how out of sync he was with the situation.
When he finally did get it, because it was swiftly pointed out to him that he had sold himself as a hostage to misfortune, he turned on BP, correctly enough, and has "kicked ass" savagely ever since. What many failed to understand was why he failed to co-ordinate the combined might of American chutzpah to provide initiatives that could soften the damage and charge BP for them later. Instead, his threats have helped to wipe billions off the value of BP shares, 40 per cent of which are owned by Americans, and from which British pension funds benefit enormously.
Last week, he received help from an unlikely ally. While in Afghanistan, British Prime Minister David Cameron backed Obama's almost invective anti-BP stance and invited the unhappy comment that while the President "kicks ass", David "kisses" it; not the most erogenous spot on which to build an affective, effective and healthy "special relationship".
Probably the worst pun of the year came to me when I wondered how Cameron would start his post-gaffe telephone conversation with the President. I thought an endearing "O'ill be loving you, eternally" could do the trick. But, whatever happened to the buck the President said had stopped with him, to the responsibility he assumed?
Clearly, the buck has been uncomfortably lodged with BP. There was no need for the et tu Brute? scenario played out by Cameron as he plunged the dagger in BP's oil-soaked chest. The President's fitful knife-throwing act was enough; more than enough.