Like thousands of others, I watched Michelle Muscat being interviewed by Saviour Balzan on the state TV channel, and I found it hilarious. Not Mrs Muscat's performance, but the show itself.
I have known Michelle Muscat since 1992 or '93, when she was still dating Sandro Mangion (the blond, easy-going guy who would later become president of a gay rights association). My first impressions of her, which have not changed over the years, were that she was articulate, effervescent, self-centred, and strong-willed. After watching the Balzan interview, I felt that Mrs Muscat's defining characteristics are still those of all those years ago. Indeed, nothing has changed.
Mr Balzan admitted that he had been chasing both Mrs Muscat and her spouse for more than a year to get them to agree to be interviewed. I can understand their reluctance. Mr Balzan is probably Europe's best amateurish journalist. His lack of preparation, his lack of perspicacity, his lack of tact, his lack of tack, guarantee that his show unfailingly turns out to be, time and again, a missed opportunity. Had he been endowed with a little knowhow, he might have given us some insight into the interviewee's ego and shadow, what hides behind her persona... Indeed, the interviewer has to be something between a journalist, a novelist and a psychoanalyst. Unfortunately, for us, Mr Balzan seems unable to answer to any of these callings, or the mix required to make a good interviewer. Any insight we got was thanks to Mrs Muscat's own exertions, not Mr Balzan's. So I can understand why the Muscats have been avoiding an interview with the man for so long.
Instead, Mr Balzan managed to muddle up an interview which was at once simple to execute and full of potential. "Simple to execute" - indeed, Mr Balzan could have killed it; instead he simply executed the interview, in that other sense of the word. I really do not understand why the Muscats have chosen such a papru as an ally.
Just consider this mumbo jumbo which succeeded in bypassing Mr Balzan's filter (we have to assume he has one): "fil-qosor għax jien magħruf li ma nagħmilx mistoqsijiet fil-qosor imma xtaqt nistaqsik fil-qosor" ("to be brief because I am known not to ask brief questions but I wanted to ask you briefly")!
Or this other one: "ma rridx inpoġġi kliem f'ħalqek jew inpoġġi kliem f'ħalq tiegħi" (sic!) ("I do not want to put words in your mouth or to put words in my mouth")!
(Okay, here I have to admit that I asked a number of people to decipher what the guru journalist's lips were trying to pronounce, and there is a school of thought which argues that they heard, "ma rridx inpoġġi kliem f'ħalqek jew inpoġġi kliem bħal tiegħi" "I don't want to put words in your mouth or to put words like mine" - you can check for yourself on YouTube, it's exactly at the beginning of the 53rd minute).
This Maltese luminary of European journalism was interviewing the wife of the Prime Minister of the land (variously known as the "First Lady") and he could neither bring himself to prepare a decent script nor to pronounce his questions in an intelligent or at least intelligible way. There were moments when the First Lady herself seemed unable to hold back her smile, even though she was narrating a harrowing experience for her, her nuclear family, her extended family, her intimate friends, her less-intimate friends, her foreign friends, the "ex-President Emeritus" (a mix-up undoubtedly due to the nervousness caused by being in Mr Balzan's presence), her entourage, her supporters, her acquaintances, her followers... But I understand her. How can you hide your smile when your interlocutor's IQ is higher than Einstein's?
Or else consider this: Mr Balzan was comparing something to a "ġlieda bejn il-klieb, b'kull rispett lejn il-klieb" ("a dogfight, with all due respect to dogs")! Can you blame Mrs Muscat for forgetting her life-changing experience and spotting the hilarity in the papru performance unfolding before her own eyes?
Mrs Muscat is articulate but Mr Balzan needs to use, "x'jgħidulu?" ("what's it called?"). ("Face-palm" I think is the phrase used nowadays.) Imagine somebody on BBC or Bruno Vespa on Rai Uno using the English or Italian equivalent of "x'jgħidulu" when interviewing people of the rank of Mrs Muscat!
And then, Mr Balzan kept referring to Mrs Muscat in the masculine! "Kont ċert" ("were you sure" in the second person singular masculine) and "konxju" ("aware", again in the second person singular masculine) pepper his questions! Ċert? Konxju? When addressing a lady? I know this is the heyday of gender identity laissez-faire - but there's a limit to everything!
This was a prime time, state-television show, and the interviewer didn't even know the difference between the masculine and the feminine! The greatness of Saviour Balzan lies in his ability to elevate mediocre amateurism to an art. (Umberto Eco saw something similar in Mike Bongiorno.)
I can (again) understand why Mrs Muscat told Mr Balzan "il-gazzetti naqrahom meta jkolli aptit" ("I read the newspapers only when I feel like"). It would have been an insult had that phrase been addressed to any other newspaper editor (in his free time, when he's not busy sweating to prepare Xtra sajf, Mr Balzan is involved in the editorial process of at least two soi-disant newspapers). But since it was addressed at Mr Balzan, I can understand Mrs Muscat - she was telling it as it is. (Or should I have said "saying it as it is" in this case?) Was she telling Mr Balzan that she reads his newspapers only when she feels like, because they are a bit like his programme...?
When Milan Kundera, the naturalised-French Czech author wrote his theory of the novel, he argued that the author stipulates a contract with his reader at the very beginning of the novel. The reader gets to know, more or less, what the novel will deliver, and after reading it will be able to judge whether the author has kept his word or not. Let's apply Kundera's theory to Mr Balzan's real-life sit-com.
The opening signature tune is a macho riff played on the electric guitar at a menacingly low tempo. It manages to evoke images of a tough guy advancing in the light of a lamppost toward the dark alley where mobsters are hiding, with the clear intention of beating the living daylights out of them. This is what we expect from Saviour Balzan. That he'll give the politicians and other puffed-up, big-ego big shots some hard talk and decidedly a hard time. Then you watch the show, and you see him crawl and prostrate himself before the powerful First Lady. At least the closing signature tune is more sincere. It's a vintage 8-mm film of a village festa accompanied by the Greenfields singing about the sales of their records (in the thousands).
Mrs Muscat shared some insight beyond her immediate life. She said this, and I think her analysis is correct: "I am more passionate about social democratic values and I understand certain aspects and issues that are felt by the grassroots more than my husband can. Joseph is more centrist and knows how to work with all sides and strike a balance."
My Personal Library (16)
Tomás Eloy Martínez (1932-2010) wrote many novels but my favourite is The Peron Novel (1988). When The New York Times reviewed the English translation, it observed that "Peron's power, as Mr Eloy Martínez teaches us, depended not on his character but on his essential emptiness. Peron's will for power gained control by being seemingly obedient to whomever he was speaking with. The rich, the poor, the generals, the anti-imperialist nationalists, the fascists, all could see themselves in the general. 'The reason I've been a leading figure in history time and time again,' he says, 'is precisely because I have contradicted myself'."
Eloy Martínez wrote another well-known novel, called Santa Evita (1995). It's not as good as The Peron Novel and I think Michelle Muscat is right to say that the comparison with Eva Person is trite. I think it has now been reduced to a cliché and I will thus not say anything about it, though the book does form part of my personal library. Readers might wish to read, or re-read, it. Though as I said, it's not as good as the other one, it's not that bad either.