I watched U2 live in concert four years ago. They were playing home, in Dublin's Croke Park stadium. Hand on heart, I can say that it was one of the Seven Wonderful Moments in my lifetime and since then I've been quite the starry-eyed fan.
But last week the band, whose leader, Bono, campaigns for world peace, unification and freedom, made one of the biggest faux pas in their history.
They put on a concert in Berlin to commemorate the fall of one of the most monstrous barriers in history, and they erected a 'wall' to stop fans without tickets from watching.
Sure, it was just a two-metre high 'sight barrier' to exclude those without one of 10,000 free tickets from catching a glimpse of the band, but still you think: Achtung Baby! The irony is simply too heavy - it certainly wasn't the place for any more curtains.
Somehow, the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago was a symbolic personal moment for each one of us. Do you remember that 1981 Disney film Night Crossing, which used to be aired on RAI's Cinema in Famiglia on Friday nights? It was about a family who managed to escape from East Berlin in a hot-air balloon. I still recall the dilemmas that that film made me question: would I leave my family for the price of freedom?
And then suddenly the wall was no more. What a bright moment for humanity! I still have pieces of the wall that my grandmother got us when she visited Germany that very same winter.
But I'm thinking perhaps we can read more into what U2 did than just bad taste. As Oscar Wilde once said, life imitates art. We are, in fact, constantly doing what U2 did last week.
Look at the way our society works: we bring one wall down, but swiftly replace it with another one. Each nation has its own walls; ours is perhaps the worst kind of all - that of intolerance. And it seems to be stretching wider than the Iron Curtain itself.
We don't tolerate people seeking safety on our shores. The horrible story of the man who refuses to donate his blood unless he's guaranteed that it wouldn't be given to immigrants is proof of how thick our xenophobic wall is becoming.
Here's another boulder from our wall of intolerance: the news that the Maltese will readily accept a female to run the country as Prime Minister, provided she is Catholic, not lesbian and not black.
We've even become intolerant of realistic forms of art; scandalised by undressed mannequins in a shop window meant to raise awareness about sex trafficking; scandalised by a grim literary piece which depicts a realistic manner of male behaviour; scandalised that Alex Vella Gera's story 'should be classified along with genuine literary efforts' as the author Frans Sammut pompously declared in an online comment.
Which brings us to another brick in our wall: our society is riddled with wannabe high-brow people who believe they are can determine what is inferior and superior when it comes to 'genuine literary effort'.
I went to watch Nbid ta' Kuljum at St James last Friday. Would that pass as a literary effort? Was I meant to take a pair of earplugs to spare myself being scandalised by an art form which imitates life?
Perhaps the worst brick of all is that of lethargy, especially when it seems to be oozing from the hub of our future society:
University students themselves, together with their lecturers, their mentors.
Where are their protests against these reactions of intolerance? They are possibly too busy debating that simple, ridiculous, thing of a condom machine on campus.
Brick by brick, we're building a wall of sheer apathy, and tomorrow's society will be unable to think for itself, unable to take responsibility for its actions.
It is scary that instead of becoming more liberal we are throwing all our energies into denying the realities of life: that we are all human beings, regardless of colour, race and sexual orientation; that 20-somethings do have sex; that people are crude and ignorant, and that our literature should be free to reflect those elements of society.
If we keep on ignoring this huge wall, we'll soon need U2 to tell us How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.