J’accuse : Taste

This article and accompanying Bertoon appear in today’s edition of the Malta Independent on Sunday.

I type this article to the noises and sounds of the Carrer de Blai in the Poble Sec district of Barcelona as it wakes up to a new day. I’m renting an apartment for a few days in this bubbly multicultural city where paellas are served by Vietnamese waiters and blaugrana t-shirts are sold by persistent Indian shopkeepers. Thanks to one of Luxembourg’s rare national holidays I get a long weekend in a lovely Mediterranean environment with familiar sounds and smells (and mouth watering tastes). I may not have a deep enough pocket to visit El Bulli – the world’s best restaurant according to many – but I am determined to appease my taste buds with a few culinary expeditions… next stop the Mercat.

Of Familiarity and Contempt
The psychologist John Jost once noted that “many people who lived under feudalism, the Crusades, slavery, communism, apartheid, and the Taliban believed that their systems were imperfect but morally defensible and [even sometimes] better than the alternatives they could envision.” Psychologically we are much more likely to choose the familiar than the new unknown. This might be an adaptive trait we have received from our ancestors where creatures with a preference for the well known may have had more offspring than those with a fancy for the new. More than a case of “if it works then it ain’t needing fixing” this is more of a case of “if it’s in place then it must be working”.

Interestingly, conservative systems are best preserved when the individuals within that system possess a heightened need to manage uncertainty and threat. Individuals within that kind of system are more likely to opt for the known than the unknown, for the familiar than the potential change. Boy do some people know this. My brother has joined me on this Barcelona visit and so I got a rare chance to see the paid up adverts political parties have placed in our national newspapers. I was particularly humoured by the PN ad (yes it is a PN ad even though the maduma [marble] logo is hidden away in the bottom corner) that kicks off with the words “Oh,look. Here come Jason’s people”.

When I first saw those words I thought they reminded me of a particular style. Then it clicked. The nationalists have taken to copying Daphne’s style. Here I was being confronted by another example of cutting and pasting Stamperija style. It’s not just the introductory snipe at Jason Micallef though. It’s the wording of the whole ad. It’s a political ad mind you – as in an ad taken out by a political party that’s almost shy of its own logo – but it is about as politically engaging as a gossip magazine.

A Taste of Things to Come
The ad went on … “Some people aren’t embarrassed to be led by Toni, Jason and Anglu or to be associated with fellow candidates like Manwel Cuschieri’s brother, Glenn Befingfield or Sharon ‘NO2EU’ Bonici. We think it says a lot about them, but we won’t spell it out. Taste is such a personal thing.” Taste is also a great magazine that is distributed with the Malta Independent but let’s concentrate on the message for a bit. Embarassement, taste, association (or guilt by association)- not very earth shattering political values are they?

This ad says more about the nationalist party than a four hour debate chaired by some referee of twisted impartiality on ‘national’ TV. First of all the Daphne style (and taste) is all over the place. The Stamperija people must adore her blog to the point of adopting the particular antics deployed day in day out therein. But this is not a columnist’s blog in which she is free to rant and rave about Muscat’s taste in holidays, children’s names or underwear. This is an ad taken out to convince you to vote for a political party. You are supposed to vote for the group of people huddled together in the tiny picture at the bottom of the ad.

They would hide them if they could but they don’t. No, instead they blow up the pictures Marlene Mizzi and Edwards Scicluna- probably the least criticisable of the Labour motley crue in the hope that your “threatened” mind holds them guilty- by association. Not to mention the “Manwel Cuschieri’s brother” swipe that is straight out of the Daphne formularium. All we needed was the picture of Anglu on an elephant and we would really have got the ball rolling.

Personal Things
Now don’t get carried away with the idea that J’accuse is defending the Labourite motley crue in this zero-sum game of ours. Unfortunately I have to make that caveat every time I write this kind of thing thanks to our black or white mentality that the PLPN thrive on. I have written elsewhere (and will go on to write in the coming weeks) about the how and why of the J’accuse vote. What I’d like to do here is point out the crass emptiness of the zero-sum political game we have.

The nationalist party, long an upholder of such interesting and challenging value building blocks as subsidiarity, solidarity and more is now reduced to dabbling with gossip girl rhetoric. Taste, they tell you is a personal thing. What worries me is that they are making it a political thing. What worries me even more is that many people actually like the idea. De gustibus non disputandum est – you cannot really argue about taste. And since when did the PN shy out of an argument? Since when they ran out of political fuel that’s when.

I mean the vast majority of the candidates- PN or PL-would be easy prey for any contestant with a few brain cells above the average. Just look at those six minute interviews doing the rounds on the net with all candidates. Almost none of them were able to mention one piece of legislation which came out of the European Parliament. And they want to be sitting there after 6th June! There is no real political debate. There cannot be one. The leader of the opposition seems to believe that water and electricity bills are relevant in an MEP election contest. The nationalists seem to think that your vote is about your glitzy hunches – and they tell you that in the advert that gets top marks for bad taste.

Uncontroversial Security
A friend of mine once told me that if you want to compete with the big guns in an EP election what you need to do is dress stylishly (but not glaringly), have a neat (good boy) haircut, clean shave and avoid controversial issues in a bland, boring way sticking to the conservative centre. You’d have to be anonymously pleasant without the irritating progressive, reformist banter most candidates for change are about. He laughed nervously at the end, adding:”What you need to be is another Simon”.

He is so right. We would only vote for change if it were not controversial. If something is controversial we would probably prefer to stick to the familiar no matter how politically empty and ridiculously naive it has become. We will stick to waving our respective flags as the Cuschieris and the Demicolis battle out the charade we all know it has become but we are afraid of admitting. Even when people like the undersigned write slogans on large walls about the Emperor’s New Clothes we can only huff and say that better the devil you know. Especially if the Devil Wears Prada.

They don’t want to spell it out…them being the nationalists in the advert. They can’t really. Which is sad because “spelling it out” in political terms would have been the right way to go about it. They could talk policies and ideas, instead they talk style and taste. This is the political world that judges people on “pushing the wrong buttons” where Glen Bedingfield, Paul Borg Olivier and David Casa can be judged for pressing the wrong buttons at the wrong time.

It’s Not the Same
There’s an amazing store for women’s clothes in Barcelona. It’s called Desigual (this is not a paid advert) and my girflriend goes crazy for their stuff. The dresses and clothes stick out in a crowd and are as colourful as the plumage of your average jungle dwelling bird.The slogan for Desigual is “it’s not the same” – as in every item let’s you stick out from the crowd. Who knows? Funny how commercially we might still be driven by the very opposite forces that drive us to the polling booth (or to abstain therefrom) on voting days.

Speaking of voting days. I managed to get a ticket on the “cheap flight”. It wasn’t exactly Lidl at six in the morning but the “race for a place” on the rare charter flight was quite competitive. Frankly I’ve had it with all these poor sods who tend to comment on blogs such as mine or write letters to the editor and complain about this luxury for expats. Statistically it’s Labourites who do most complaining, probably still labouring under Alfred Sant’s gripe of the crucial expat “blue vote”.

That’s because post-last election Sant was busy waving a list containing my name and that of several others in Parliament claiming that those using the subsidised flight were generally of a nationalist tendency. How he got hold of the list of Air Malta passengers is beyond me. Data Protection is not our forte I guess. On the other hand what really irks me is that people think that this whole business of travelling to vote is enjoyable. Well, have I got news for you- it isn’t.

Some citizens cannot fathom the idea that an expat still has sufficient ties with home to be more interested in who represents him in Europe from Malta than anywhere else. It’s not only normal but also happens in almost every EU country. What baffles me further is the particular labourite obstinacy that is rooted in the conviction that by eliminating expat votes they eliminate nationalists. Apart from being a sharp drop in style it is the most antidemocratic reasoning heard this side of Cambodia.

Interest Voting
Silly.That’s what the labourite calls for slashing the expat vote are. If they really wanted less “blue” votes then they should back the bloody obvious:voting in embassies.Then, I am sure that the expat vote count will reduce drastically. Much less expats would vote without the “incentive” to travel home. Yes, the argument against pampered voters works in this case. But the solution I envisage does not deny anybody the possibility to vote – which is after all the crux of the problem.

I’m afraid that obstinate voters like myself who are undeniably much more interested in politics than most stylish voters on the island would still take the trouble to vote in an embassy. And we have every damn right to do so. Whether Jason Micallef and Paul Borg Olivier like it or not.

Fashion News from Around the World
And now for something completely different. The not so trendy indians did not vote for change and confirmed the governing coalition headed by the Congress party.The unstylish Sri Lankan government published uncool photos of the dead head of the rebel Tamil Tigers dressed in a passé camouflage dress and sporting an ugly bullethole in the forehead.In Pakistan the dirty war against the Taliban has displaced 1.5 million shabbily dressed refugees while in the USA cool President Obama declared the current state of the war on terror as messy.

Gunatanamo prisoners are expected to shed the old hat orange gear in the first civilian trials to take place. Garish orange might be replaced with suit and tie should the person accused of bombing embassies in Africa in 1998 choose to do so. In the United Kingdom the uncool Speaker of the House of Commons was forced to resign after a feeble and clumsy attempt at defending a controversial system of MP expenses (that probably included beautician’s bills). Finally Governor Schwarzenegger’s California, of the Hollywood jetset, passed a law according to which state lawmakers would have pay cuts whenever the state budget is in deficit.

Taste. It’s such a personal thing….and it’s up to you… really.

Jacques will be back from his holiday by the time you read this. Comments and reactions can be left at http://www.akkuza.com.