Calabria, we have a problem

But first, something I've been meaning to ask for ages. Can anyone kindly explain to me why we have become such an outrageously intolerant lot over the last few years?

And I mean seriously intolerant, by the way. As in, pathologically incapable of handling any form of criticism whatsoever. In fact, we seem utterly incapable of handling anything at all... if it isn't the verbal equivalent of falling prostrate at our feet and fawning over us with grovelling, puke-worthy praise.

I don't know, but... did I miss out on something? Did Malta suddenly metamorphose into some kind of glorious, world-conquering superpower while I wasn't looking? Are we now a country that is so high on its own ego that we feel we can literally do no wrong - and woe betide anyone (especially a filthy, disgusting foreigner) who so much as squeaks an opinion to the contrary?

Seriously, that is what it's beginning to look like from where I'm sitting at the moment. And that's in front of a computer monitor, staring in incremental disbelief at the hysterical and quite frankly unbelievably daft online ruckus kicked up over some thoughtless comments posted by a Calabrian chef who owns a restaurant in St Paul's Bay.

You know, the one who described us as 'a nation of Arab potato-growers who can't play football for toffee' (or words to that effect, anyway)... thus provoking an avalanche of reciprocal insults, featuring several helpings of 'Calabrese sausage', and complete with a Facebook group calling for a boycott on his restaurant... if not for his outright deportation/decapitation, etc.

Even before this little incident got so grossly out of hand, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that our general tolerance threshold to anything we vaguely dislike has now been down-tuned to the lowest point on the dial. You name it, we won't stand for it. Be it xenophobic comparisons to (jaqq!) Arabs; or English priests who fail to share half the country's romantic notions about a recently-deceased demagogue... heck, there was even talk of an online petition to get a Times blogger fired, because some people don't like his writing style... honestly: what are we going to object to next? Who else's 'right' to free expression are we going to defecate upon, in the name of 'national pride'?

And look: it's getting worse all the time. No sooner do we find ourselves confronted by something inimical to our national sense of aesthetics, propriety or decorum, you can rest assured it will be... Biff! Sock! Bam! Kapow!

Before you know it, we will invariably resort to violence. OK, not always violence of the literal, 'bomb-on-your-doorstep' variety - though that still occasionally happens, as a fairly recent episode at the Gozo cathedral so graphically reminded us - but verbal violence? Calls for collective recriminatory action? Boycotts, proscriptions, 'naming and shaming', that sort of thing...? It seems to have become our immediate response to anything that excites even the slightest hint of antipathy.

And part of the beauty of the irony in all this, is that - at least in the Calabrian case - we are taking mortal offence at comparisons to Arabs. Yes, that's right: just like all those Islamic fundamentalist Arabs, who go blowing up US embassies whenever they don't like what other people have to say about them and their religion...

OK, I seem to have rushed ahead of myself slightly. A few concrete examples, you say? Well, I've already mentioned the Piccola Calabria incident, and I'll come back to it in a sec. Meanwhile, there was that little 'Mintoff' obituary in the Catholic Herald last month... the one written by a certain Fr Alexander Lucie Smith (who has since been rechristened 'Lucifer Smith', by the way); and apart from the notoriously alliterative retort by Joe Grima - the one that started with a 'F*** you Father', and ended with Grima's resignation from One TV - the response to date has been virtually indistinguishable from a collective howl of tormented anguish, of the kind Allen Ginsberg might have once written a beatnik poem about.

And yet, all this 'Lucifer Smith' fellow actually did was suggest that 'Dom Mintoff the man' was in reality somewhat less impressive than 'Dom Mintoff the posthumously-reinvented myth'. Yes, folks, that really is the extent of Lucifer Smith's unforgivable crime. He failed to simply buy wholesale into the historical revisionism of the moment... that instant, 'two-minutes-in-the-microwave' popcorn-style reinvention that transformed an anti-clerical, secularist and aggressively non-conformist politician into a mummified, Rosary-clasping, male version of Mother Theresa.

Now, lest I be misunderstood: I do sort of understand that transformation, you know. I do appreciate that it has a certain inescapable political power of its own... that it serves a purpose far, far beyond the immediate scope of honouring the memory of a recently deceased former prime minister, and all that...

But hey! That doesn't mean we all have to buy into the revisionism as well. I for one tried that particular recipe, and I didn't like how it tasted one tiny bit. Nor was I much impressed by Lucifer Smith's additional seasoning, by the way. He was occasionally off-target on his facts; and he also took the curious decision to judge Mintoff on his environmental record, of all things. Curious, because 'environmentalism' only became a major national concern in Malta during the 1990s, and was therefore entirely alien to Mintoff's own mindset. Odd, too, because the environmental damage done to Malta over the subsequent 25 years - especially the serial uglification in the first decade after 1987 - was considerably worse.

But... who the hell cares? I would have thought Lucifer Smith was perfectly entitled to his own views about Malta's only internationally known celebrity (with the possible exception of Joseph Calleja). I would have thought this sort of criticism more or less came with the territory of international fame/notoriety; that it was a mark of distinction that sets the celebrity and nonentity apart... (after all, you never read critical obituaries about nobodies, do you?)

So... why all the fuss? Why the deluge of insults? Why the Biblical flood of positively untranslatable invective posted below that article... some of which remained there for weeks, until the Catholic Herald was finally alerted to the presence, on its own website, of some of the foulest and most blasphemous language ever devised by the human imagination?

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it now, but it increasingly strikes me as though we are degenerating into something virtually indistinguishable from the same old Muslim fanatics at whose occasional terrorist act we pretend to be shocked. But there is a crucial difference. Those Muslim fanatics have a vague excuse for their ghastly behaviour. A lousy excuse, I'll grant you, but an excuse nonetheless. It's called 'religious sensitivity', and before you go scoffing at it, bear in mind that even here in Malta, 'offending religious sentiment' remains a crime that can theoretically land you in jail.

But when it comes to our own, increasingly brutal suppression of minority or non-conformist opinions... well, what's our excuse, exactly? Let me guess. Other people can't say what they think about us because... we don't want them to. It offends our nationalistic sentiments so much we feel instantly compelled to kick them in the nuts.

Their views, you see, run counter to our instant, popcorn style reinvention of our ourselves in our own little minds... as though our painstakingly constructed illusion of a shiny, happy nation of foetus-friendly, family-values obsessed, fundamentalist ultra-Catholics, simply cannot withstand the onslaught of brutish reality. And being unable to counter the truth with anything remotely plausible, our only defence mechanism is to savagely bite off the head of anyone who dares to portray us any differently.

And that brings me emphatically back to the Piccola Calabria incident I mentioned earlier. You can follow it for yourselves on Facebook - at least, if you have the stomach for that sort of thing - but last I looked, people are now threatening to not only boycott the restaurant themselves... but to also organize a picket line outside the door, and harass anyone else who tries to get in. To 'name and shame' any 'traitor' who would willingly betray his homeland by ordering a pizza calabrese with extra pepperoni...

And you know what? That just makes me want to pick up the phone and book a table there myself. In fact... damn it, that's exactly what I'll do right now: "Pronto, Piccola Calabria? Buona sera: sono un piccolo arabo maltese che fa le patate... si, precisamente: un cane bastardo, morto di fame, un lurido pezzo di merda che non capisce un cazzo di calcio... posso prenotare per stasera? Si, quel tavolo vicino alla finestra andra' benissimo, grazie..."