Saturday, 14th February 2009
SO MANY LIBERALS, SO LITTLE SPACE
It’s been a funny old time, recently. Our esteemed politicians, may their names be forever exalted, have been relatively quiet, leaving aside bouts of grand-standing about utility tariffs and such like, while the forces of greenery and liberalism have been raising little storms all over the place.
Not content with winning (with not a little help from political opportunists from both sides of the divide) her manufactured battle to save St John’s from being turned into a post-nuclear wasteland, the redoubtable Astrid Vella turned her beady eye on the members of the Board that runs the place and demanded their resignation.
Precisely why Ms Vella thinks she has the right to do this is not entirely clear to me.
Precisely who she represents, for that matter, is equally unclear, but what the heck, while I disagree with what she says (more precisely, with her way of saying it and who she says it at (and the use of that particular preposition is apposite)) I will die for her right to say it.
Well, not quite, I’ll kick up a bit of a fuss in this blog or in my column if someone tries to gag her, and then I’ll move on to bitching and moaning about something else.
In the meantime, proponents of the right of freedom of expression have been protesting – with due justification and quite rightly – at the continued obscenity of the banning of “Stitching” by a group of people who, amazingly, persist in their arrogant assumption that they know better than I do what I should and should not see or hear.
To date, I have chosen not to make any effort to watch the play, both because I don’t particularly fancy the subject and, probably more cogently, because I spend my weekends up North, but if these thought-controllers keep at it, I might have to go, just to defy them and their puny mind-sets.
But probably not, I really couldn’t be bothered. Which is not to say that I think it is not a travesty of all the values we should hold valuable in Malta in the early twenty-first century that the members of the Cinema and Theatre Classification Board haven’t been told to take their primitive philosophies and stick them where the sun don’t shine, if you’ll forgive a mild impertinence.
While on the subject of freedom of expression, the forces of good might have gone a touch too far themselves, just lately. I’m referring to the request for prosecution and destruction made by Dr Patrick Attard in respect of a piece of rabid fundamentalism that purports to outline the position of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.
To be sure, it’s not the call for prosecution that worries me: if the tract breaks the law, by fomenting hatred or by constituting discrimination, let its author or distributor or whatever be prosecuted with the full force of the law. Indeed, this ex post approach is the only one that it is admissible in a true democracy, and it could easily have been applied to “Stitching” if, just for the sake of argument, it violated the rights of any vulnerable group.
And it’s perfectly OK for Dr Attard to call for the book’s withdrawal, too, and for the resignation of the person who authorised its sale: these are consequences that, by and large, would follow logically. No serious organisation that says it bases itself on love and tolerance should countenance such claptrap.
Before anyone gets at me (or sends me crude death threats such as the one I received last week in the mail, from someone who clearly thought he was a Defender of the One True Faith) for condemning the book out of hand without reading it, it is true I haven’t read it, but I’ve had a look at its summary on the ‘Net and it’s as full of half-baked twaddle and selective quotes as that rubbish that gets churned out on GOD TV (in between the sucker-ads that try to make you send money to the two con artists who run it)
Not to put too fine a point on it, if this is the sort of rubbish that is officially sanctioned by the people who want to put the Church’s message out (the book, not GOD TV – no-one in his or her right mind can think that anyone even half-serious believes that that is anything but a scam) then it is really time for the rest of us to start working towards banning organised religion once and for all.
But Dr Attard’s protestations did cause me a twinge of discomfort, for all that his overall position deserves the support of anyone with a liberal bone in his or her body. He advocated the destruction of the book.
A bit too close to events towards the middle of the last century, that.
A closing thought: I received, irony of ironies, an appeal from Norman Lowell, for funds to help his Constitutional case. Just in case, for whatever peculiar reason you like, having received the same thing, you were moved to make a donation, just be aware that the filing of Constitutional cases doesn’t require oodles of cash for Registry Fees.
I thought you might like to know that.
RSS
Comments
I would like to clarify that I asked that the books should be destroyed in order to guarantee they they would not be RE-SOLD in Malta or abroad once they are collected.
Your comments of my posting, taken out of context, seem to me like a case of an Equus Africanus riding the back of an Equus Asinus.
Quite a funny scene under the top!
And then it would be an Equus Africanus rebuking an Equus Asinus. Nothing new here.
I had occasion, after being referred to by name and the writer having used uncomplimentary adjectives in describing me, to call him a donkey. The moderator refused my posting. I needed an explanation and I was told that 'donkey' was in direct reference to the writer, therefore my posting was unacceptable. Of course, lately I realized that even calling a disinterested student a 'donkey' is scandalous! Had I known at the time, I could have called the particular person a 'monkey' - maybe it would have been more acceptable.
Norman Lowell is a racist by what is reported and by what little I heard coming from him. The people he normally refers to, never called him names or caused him any personal discomfort.
Yet you seem to be more interested in Lowell's right to free speech while taking exception to ABC's!
Now who's using two weights and two measures here? Who's logic is warped?
Stitched is a play and it is meant to get people to think about various issues. Even though I would not go and watch it, I still do not expect to hold others from going. What right do I have to do that?
On the contrary, Norman Lowell means harm to my fellow human-beings. Again, even though I do not approve of our country being forced to host so many illegal migrants, due to our overpopulation and size, I still cannot agree with anyone who wants these people harmed. This is not an acceptable solution to the problem.
There's a bloomin' difference between one and the other.
It might have escaped your notice but Norman Lowell was found guilty by a court of law while Stitching as banned by a board of censors.
The whole point of this blog entry is that if the play included racist or obscene parts, it should have been charged in court like Lowell was, after it was staged.
...What about Norman Lowell's right to free speech - let alone 'stitched' racist and outwardly obscene overtures to which you are annoyingly lending too much advertising stick?
That, in a nutshell, sums up the gist of your warped logic on unrelentingly regular intervals.
For the record, the 20th century can be divided thus:
1900-1932 - early 20th century
1933-1965 - mid-20th century
1966-1999 - late 20th century
So, anything that happened between 1933 and 1965 can be reasonably considered to have occurred "towards the middle" of the century.
On another note, I have also received the appeal for funds by Norman Lowell. I wonder if he would accept Zimbabwean dollars.
0
Now I challenge certain contributors to make political
issue out of this matter.