Life continues after the divorce referendum albeit with more controversies about the divorce referendum. Such controversies will most probably keep on dragging even during summer. This is welcome news for the media. They started the silly season very early this year with the hounding of MPs intention about voting. It will continue by the reporting of bits and pieces of information of great value and other bits of information of no value.
The mother of all scandals
Sections of the media have successfully hounded the pro-divorce movement and forced its members to publish their income and expenditure accounts. (I am certain that all of you saw these accounts printed on the front pages of our newspapers and broadcast on the main items of our news bulletins!) After doing this successfully, these same sections of the media are now hounding the Zwieg Bla Divorzju Movement. These inquisitive and investigate journalists have an inkling that the local Church may have financially helped this Movement in its information campaign. Horrors of horrors! Imagine this horrific scenario: the Church helping a lay movement trying to inform people about the divorce question and the negative effects of divorce. Nothing can be more alien to the Church than helping financially a cause it champions and believes in! What can be more nefarious than having a Church putting its money where its mouth is!
May these crusading journalists arrive at the bottom of this mother of all scandals.
Star: saga and image
However, there is more to life that post-referendum trauma and therapy.
The saga about Star is just one example. The Maltese were united in a spontaneous chorus of rage at the savage who savaged Star. How could such brutes (the two legged one I mean) still exist? What kind of perversity can corrupt a man’s mind (it must have been a man) to make him debase himself so much?
The incident points towards another aspect of contemporary culture: the power of the image. Many dogs (and even humans) are treated atrociously every day. Star became a star because the media documented its plight. Had we not seen a photo and then video clips we would not have reacted so intensely. In a different kind of culture,Thomas wanted to touch to believe. Today we want to see to believe. Print moved culture from an oral-aural plane to a visual plane. TV gave a particular dimension to this new visuality. It translated it into an image, generally a moving image.
I am on TV, therefore, I exist; is the contemporary spin on Descartes’s Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore, I am).
One can heap example upon example. The Khmer Rouge massacred hundreds of thousands. But unlike the genocide of Rwanda, the Khmer’s horror was not documented on film or video while it was happening. There were live testimonies of the tragedy. Some people spoke about what they went through. These testimonies were not enough. A roll of film or a video recording was needed for the world to believe.
Do you remember little Madeline? She disappeared while on holiday with her family. Hundreds of children disappear every day. Madeline was different. She was on TV, the big contemporary Moloch in front of whom the powerful bow and the lowly gaze in awe.
Banishing the disabled
TV cameras were rolling when the Bisazza Str project was inaugurated. The street is now a pedestrian area, or is it? Arriva is of a different opinion and waves a signed contract to prove it. The media homed in on this controversy in the spirit of the Maltese dictum that “a controversy a day keeps boredom away.” There were also reports about some kind of controversy connecting Bisazza Str with The Point.
The media, on the other hand, unfortunately said nothing about another aspect of this vast programme of creating pedestrian zones. Such zones are fantastic for you and me. We can move around with no cars around. Not the same can be said about people with mobility problems. The designation of more and more areas as pedestrian zones is creating problems for people with mobility problems. More and more parts of Malta are becoming out of bounds for people whose only crime is their disability.
Pjazza San Gorg, Pjazza Sant Anna, Bisazza Str and other projects were designed and executed with no regard for people with mobility problem. I have written on this topic but what I wrote fell on deaf ears.
We quite justifiable protest loudly when animals are not treated fairly but we do not always protest as loudly when disabled persons are treated unfairly! This is a great pity, isn’t it?
On eggs and cucumbers
On the international sphere the controversy about e-coli is raging. Many people, especially German experts ended up with a lot of egg on their faces while many, especially Spanish famers ended with a lot of cucumbers trust in places they did not wish them to be in, i.e. rubbish dumps. How could the Germans get it so wrong?
Booooooooooooring
And now back to the boring activity associated with this time of year: correcting exam scripts.
X’taghmel?