Think again, bitches

It’s not turning out to be the best of weeks for Andrew Borg Cardona, is it? First, he incurs the wrath of the nation by daring to refer to Ira Losco as a ‘bitch’…. then he makes the near-fatal miscalculation of booking an outdoor table at the Barracuda restaurant in Balluta... 

Ouch! Honestly, if I were superstitious, I’d say the man has been cursed. But I’m not superstitious, so I shall have to conclude he is a little on the thick side instead.

Let’s start with the Ira Losco comment (I was actually joking about the Barracuda bit… even though, to be perfectly honest, we don’t know Bocca’s precise whereabouts on 16 May at approximately 8.45pm…) 

Where does one begin? Hmm. Surely, a point must come when we finally realise that what we are looking at here is actually a psychological disorder. Even the fact that the entire brouhaha revolved around the Eurovision Song Contest should point us in a certain direction. The Eurovision? You mean that ridiculous excuse for a competition that no one in the rest of Europe could possibly take seriously for more than few seconds..?

Andrew Borg Cardona

Yep, the very same. But for once, I’ll close an eye at the fact that – unlike virtually anyone else in Europe (except the Australians, of course… which sorts of tells you everything you need to know about the contest anyway) we take this competition very seriously indeed. The most you can say about this curious anomaly is that is a little embarrassing: nothing more. On paper, however, there is nothing wrong with entering a competition and trying your damnedest to win… even if it does make your country a little bit of a laughing stock in the process.

No, what registers somewhat alarmingly on the mental health scale is the extraordinary importance attached to this competition for all the wrong reasons. Reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with the music – or even the gimmicks on display during the contest itself – but everything to do with the most unrelated issue imaginable: party politics.

Andrew Borg Cardona wasn’t the only public soapbox commentator to (accidentally) nail his colours to the mast on this one – but he remains the most conspicuous, having weighed in most heavily on the debate. And what makes his lapsus so remarkable is not the insult itself. Calling Ira a ‘bitch’ was not a nice thing to say, I’ll grant you; but then again, Bocca is not a nice person. We didn’t need this latest slip to confirm that; he has been writing regular columns in The Times for well over 20 years (mostly under the pseudonym IM Beck), and anyone who’s read them from the beginning will have observed a gradual but irreversible immersion into a bottomless cesspit of invective. 

There is, of course, a difference. When writing in public, he generally takes care to avoid the sort of brazen insults we all saw him use last week. Nonetheless his articles reveal a marked tendency to simply lump entire categories of people under various unflattering labels – trolls, minions, lil’elves, etc. – so even if his tirade against Ira Losco (not to mention “that motherfucker”) was not intended for public consumption, technically it was not that very different from everything he’s been writing in public for years.

OK, so the guy is a bit of an asshole. So far, nothing new: and certainly nothing to make us question his state of mental health. It is when he starts complaining about the same behaviour in others… especially about insults directed at himself or his cronies… that you start to perceive the first signs of a serious malfunction in the logical circuitry.

Consider this excerpt from his most recent blog in the Times:  “This is pretty rich coming from a Premier whose trolls and minions consistently, and clearly with his approval, attack anyone who isn't on their side. These attacks, luckily, are often tantamount to being savaged by a dead sheep but still they often resort to insults and worse that are personal, even sometimes misogynistic or homophobic, and with an undertone of violence that is, sadly, typically Labour…”

“Typically Labour”, huh? “Insults that are personal… even sometimes misogynistic and homophobic”, aye? Honestly; the type of brain that would fail to see the irony in those remarks, is akin to the type of brain that would see the reflection of a different person looking back at him in the mirror. It is symptomatic of delusion.

Even this, however, falls short of explaining the actual extent of the phenomenon. For all this ultimately means is that Bocca is no different from virtually anyone else you care to name. In fact, his comment was a lot less offensive than 90% of the ones that get posted underneath every online article (including, no doubt, this one). It was even less offensive than most of the replies he himself received online: and those people clearly couldn’t see the irony either.

It seems, then, that Bocca is more representative of Maltese society than many of you out there would like to think. Nor is it a unique habit of Bocca’s to group entire segments of society in the same insulting categories. Most of the people who profess to be shocked at Bocca’s comments tend to do exactly the same thing themselves… and I have often noticed that the more ‘pulit’ and ‘tal-pepe’ the person, the fouler the language and the viler the prejudice.

Ah yes, the prejudice. This, ultimately, is what clinches the underlying mental pathology. It is not the fact that he insulted Ira Losco… in which case, the reactions would have been excessive… it is the reasons he himself gave in the same series of ‘tweets’.

Consider Bocca’s rationale for a moment: Ira losco is a ‘bitch’ because she is very popular, at a time when her popularity could be used to bolster the ailing fortunes of the detested Labour Party (and its onanistic leader). She was a ‘bitch’ for as long as there was a danger she might actually win the Eurovision Song Contest, creating a ‘feel-good factor’ that would propel Labour to early election victory.

In all other respects, she remained just a singer trying to win a singing competition. But because of an ultra-tenuous link between Ira Losco and the ‘Taghna Lkoll’ brigade, the competition had (in the minds of people like Andrew Borg Cardona) taken the form and flavour of a national election. So where you and I might have watched the Eurovision Song Contest on TV last Saturday, people like Bocca were watching the same show… only under the illusion that they were witnessing the first salvoes of the next election campaign.

This is unhinged on so many levels I don’t think I can even count them all. For one thing: Ira never stood a chance in hell of winning the contest anyway… so Bocca’s entire fear was misplaced to begin with. And for another… well, what type of person loses sleep worrying about unlikely developments in the entertainment world that might somehow translate into electoral advantages for a political rival?

That particular brand of loopiness is generally known as ‘paranoia’. And a very dangerous kind of paranoia, too… in that it stems from a concern that has no place whatsoever in the real world. Technically, it is no different from the sort of disturbance that causes adults to firmly believe that an army of little green men will come out hiding the moment they fall asleep, and rifle through their personal belongings. 

In a nutshell, you have to be sick in the head to genuinely base your Eurovision Song Contest preferences on whether or not Joseph Muscat might derive any advantage from a Malta win. This for two reasons: one, even if Ira did win the contest (which was all along impossible)… how would that in any way affect people’s voting intentions in the next election? Let’s try and figure it out: “Hey, guess what? I was planning on voting Nationalist, but… screw it, because Ira won I’m switching to Labour instead…” 

Yep, I can really see that happening…

The second reason is by far the more significant, however. The only logical conclusion to be drawn from the wave of anti-Ira sentiment is that many people here – for purely political reasons – want nothing more urgently than only the worst sort of news imaginable, from now until the present government is eventually unseated. And again: what sort of person eagerly anticipates the worst of all possible fortunes to befall his or her own country?

Just apply the same reasoning to other areas, and see where it all leads. Malta traditionally never qualifies for the European Cup, either. What would happen if the national team suddenly found itself on the verge of qualifying for the first time ever… and there happened to be a Labour government under Joseph ‘that motherfucker’ Muscat?

Who would people like Andrew Borg Cardona side with under those circumstances, I wonder? Applying his own ‘Ira-bitch’ logic… any country other than Malta, naturally.

Small wonder we never actually win anything in this country, or ever have any genuine cause to celebrate as a nation. Malta has been hijacked by mentally disturbed assholes who can only ever think in terms of sabotaging their own country’s interests. 

And the most insane aspect of it all by far is that… when the time comes, these awful people will genuinely expect us all to base OUR voting intentions on THEIR paranoid lunacy. To which, of course, I have only this to say:

Think again, bitches…