I’m going to start with an appeal to your better nature. The Red Cross is urgently in need of supplies for the 1,300 immigrants in detention and another 1,000 immigrants who, in this cold and rainy weather, are living in tents. The organisation needs warm, practical clothing and shoes for men only (they have enough of what they need for women and children as people have been generous), blankets, quilts, sheets and towels, pots and pans, cutlery and crockery. All should be in good condition – nothing torn or worn out, please, and if it’s dirty, please bother to wash it first. If you wish to donate food, then please – no tins. Just stick to these basic staples, which are the ones most used: flour, sugar, cooking oil and rice. If there is an underwear manufacturer or importer out there who is reading this, and who can spare some stocks of practical cotton underwear and woollen socks for men, women and children, then the Red Cross would be very grateful. For obvious reasons, used socks and underwear are not donated or accepted, so these items are in desperately short supply. I know that because of fast-changing fashions, there are shops and distributors who are stuck with stocks of sturdy jeans that they can’t shift. This is a way they can be put to good use. To arrange for collection or drop-off, please email me at [email protected] or call Antoinette at the Red Cross on 9901 5549. Corporations interested in donating money for the express purpose of buying blankets should e-mail me at the same address. Please remember that this isn’t an alternative to throwing things away: treat people with respect and give good things, not rubbish. You might even think in terms of adding an extra Christmas present to your list and buying a blanket or two, or perhaps a warm quilt.
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Back to business: the leader-writer of The Times thinks that the Leader of the Opposition refuses to take part in television shows because he is uncomfortable in situations which are not rigidly structured and where he is unable to control the situation. The leader-writer is wrong. The real reason that Alfred Sant doesn’t take part in those shows is because he believes it would be beneath him to do so. He looks down on the shows, on the people who present them, and on the audiences who bring them alive (though he expects them to vote for him), and he won’t condescend to be a part of it. He will not, in other words, stoop to conquer.
I am always astonished to see how very many people don’t realise just what a frightful snob Sant is. He is the most atrocious snob. His overweening pride in his intellectual prowess and his self-perceived accomplishments and abilities has given him a thoroughly inappropriate belief in his superiority over all others except, perhaps, one or two Nobel laureates. He is aided and abetted in his delusions of intellectual grandeur by the massed armies of malcontents and adoring women who worship his Big Brain, and who insist on telling him how very clever he is – all the time. Intellectual prowess and the ability to speak languages is one thing; real intelligence is another. A key part of intelligence is being able to acutely observe situations and to act accordingly.
Alfred Sant’s political track record has shown consistently that he is anything but intelligent. Any fool can write a book, as the best-seller list sometimes shows, more so when it’s a horrendously bad book. Any plodder can score a doctorate if he plods long and hard enough and with few other distractions (the tortoise and the hare). For evidence of intelligence, don’t give me doctorates and languages: give me proof of life and work, and behaviour therein. Alfred Sant has made one really stupid decision after another, not least his really, really irresponsibly stupid decision to stick with the Labour Party and become its president in the early 1980s, when it was the pits of corruption and gross indecency.
Even his policies – as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Opposition – have been phenomenally, unbelievably, crassly stupid. They were so stupid that they had bells and neon lights on them, and wore a dunce’s cap. They were so stupid that they left me breathless at their unsurpassed and unsurpassable stupidity. Why do I keep repeating the word stupid? It’s because it’s the only one that fits. We’re so busy listening to Alfred Sant and his army of wonky fans telling us how intelligent he is that we’ve forgotten to do the intelligent thing and assess the situation with our own eyes, ears and minds. Is what we have before us the actions, behaviour and attitude of an intelligent man? The straight answer is no.
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The surest sign of intelligence is a sharp sense of humour (by which I don’t mean slapstick comedy or lavatory jokes). Few people are intelligent who don’t have that attribute. Few people who have that attribute are not also intelligent. The last time the Leader of the Opposition made a joke, the nation cringed. Maybe he’s funny in private, but you know what? I doubt it. That’s because I think he’s not intelligent, though his bevy of female admirers probably think he’s Woody Allen.
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His refusal to appear on television shows to publicise himself and his message (such as both may be) is just another example of how unintelligent he is, despite his amazing intellectual prowess – evidence of which, incidentally, I have yet to see. I rather suspect that what some others see as stupendous intellectual ability I would classify as the mental peregrinations of a crashing bore trying desperately hard to prove himself, possibly to make up for inadequacy in some other department.
Sant wishes to debate with the Prime Minister only in a forum dignified with the proper level of seriousness for important persons such as them: a one-to-one on the State television channel, with a stopwatch-clasping nodding-dog from the Broadcasting Authority keeping time as each says his bit. He doesn’t like that kind of thing because it is structured and helps him feel in control, The Times leader-writer and some others have remarked. The accusation that he fears the questions of journalists doesn’t really make sense when you consider that he has far more to fear from the Prime Minister, who is far sharper than any journalist I know.
No, Sant likes that kind of set-up because it makes him feel important, and he dislikes other kinds of set-up because they make him feel subordinate to the journalist and the audience. It’s not the process of being questioned that he hates so much, but being made to feel subordinate. And he especially hates being made to feel subordinate to a crowd of intellectual inferiors, by somebody whom he regards as an intellectual charlatan.
The thing you have to bear in mind about Alfred Sant is this: he thinks he’s superior to the rest of us. Remember that, and you can read the man like a book.