The storm in a teacup caused by the Gonzi-Gaddafi photomontage confirms my long-held view that both the Nationalist and Labour parties have no clue as to what constitutes effective satire.

Both the Nationalist and Labour Party have no clue as to what constitutes effective satire- Claire Bonello

For those of you who have missed the whole kerfuffle and furious calls for apologies, the offending item was a photomontage depicting Lawrence Gonzi’s head superimposed on the body of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It had been doing the rounds online for some time and it wasn’t a particularly good photomontage – a fuzz of Gaddafi’s black hair still showed up behind the Prime Minister’s face.

The image was circulated online without comment until it showed up on the Facebook page of the Labour Party’s equality officer Rachel Tua. That’s when the over-industrious ‘Taking Offence Department’ within the Nationalist Party sprung into action. They called for Labour leader Joseph Muscat to demand an apology from Rachel Tua. And condemned the Labour Party’s “officials and extremist candidates attacking whoever they disagree with in a personal and vulgar way.”

Cue – a big yawn from anybody who had seen the sloppy photomontage.

There are two reasons why the PN reaction was a big fail. Firstly, there’s the pot-kettle aspect of it all. The PN media has been slapping out offensive caricatures of Labour prime ministers for ages now. One time In-Nazzjon was fined for depicting Alfred Sant as Adolf Hitler. There was never any condemnation coming from PN quarters then, just as there has never been any condemnation of hate speech coming from PN exponents (such as the Facebook declaration by PN councillor Rene Rossignaud about Mintoff’s followers still being alive). So switching on the political correctness button because there’s a lame photomontage being shared around is not going to go down very well.

There’s another thing too. The Gaddafi reference is simply an extension of Godwin’s law – a rule of thumb coined by American lawyer Mark Godwin, stating that over time, all internet debateswill end up with one participant comparing another to Hitler, or the Nazis. Comparing someone to Hitler or Nazis does not necessarily mean that the person referred to is a mass murderer and despot and guilty of crimes against humanity. The original meaning has changed to refer to someone who is obsessed with imposing his view or way of doing things on others (not necessarily through forcible means).

So a fitness fanatic could be called a fitness Nazi. And it would have nothing to do with genocide but simply an obsession with press-ups and personal bests and broccoli. The offending photomontage simply substitutes Hitler with Gaddafi, but again it would take an exceedingly literal-minded person to interpret it as meaning Gonzi is a blood-thirsty dictator. This has gone completely over the heads of the people at the PN who are so busy taking offence, and those of the PL who actually think that the photomontage resonates in any way.

• Here’s a warning to parents – Keep your kids away from Kappara. Apparently they’re not welcome there.

Yes, newspapers have reported that a number of Kappara residents and the Kappara Residents’ Voluntary Action Group are up in arms because parts of a garden in their locality have been painted in “carnivalesque” colours thereby “attracting children of all ages”. This is deemed to be unacceptable by the protesting residents who claim that Kappara is a “quiet residential area” where the majority of the residents are elderly.

A couple of brightly coloured tiles inside the park have enraged the residents. They said, “We are used to living in a serene environment but the administrative committee painted the steps in bright colours and also marked boxes for children to play hopscotch on without getting the relevant permits beforehand ignoring the residents’ concerns.”

Oh dear. Rather than trying to preserve their precious “serene environment” it would seem that these grouches are trying to have Kappara declared the Grumpy Old Men hamlet of Malta – an exclusive reserve for the anti-children brigade who can shake their walking sticks and tut-tut in shock at the sheer audacity of children playing hopscotch in a public garden.

I’ve seen many examples of NIMBY behaviour and I sympathise with people who have to live next to rowdy neighbours or who are inconvenienced by construction works but this really takes the biscuit. I would have thought that the sight of children playing and laughing in a public garden – as they are entitled to do – would be an uplifting one and not a cause for angry accusations.

More to the point – where are children supposed to play if not in public gardens? It’s bad enough that our houses and apartments are getting smaller, that roofs have been replaced by penthouses and that the countryside is increasingly the sole domain of hunters and trappers, now children are to be denied of a potential play area because a bunch of moaners griping about hopscotch tiles.

So much for inter-generational solidarity and reaching out to bridge the gap between old and young. The complaining residents said that their complaints to the Kappara administrative committee and the Prime Minister “fell on deaf ears”. May they continue to do so.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt