Stephen Calleja once again shows his personal hatred of Flimkien ghal-Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) and, in particular, Astrid Vella in his piece “Where’s the halo, Astrid?” (TMIS, 19 July). Responding to these in my “unmistakable” style (to use Mr Calleja’s words) is becoming positively tiresome because it requires the exercise of great restraint to resist returning some of the choice compliments in his opinion piece. Mr Calleja style is also unmistakable, consisting of nothing more than a string of cheap insults and taunts. Mr Calleja latest opinion piece once more raises the question of the motive behind his attack on Ms Vella.
The title of Mr Calleja article, “Where’s the halo, Astrid?” sets the tone for the banalities that follow. These include such disagreeable remarks as Ms Vella being an “idol” to her “followers” who seem to “venerate everything anything she does” and that “she can do no wrong”; other choice remarks include “auras of sanctity”, “walking a foot above the ground”, “Angelik type adoration”, “Malta’s first saint” and so on. Can Mr Calleja please be kind enough to reveal the purpose behind these crude attempts to discredit FAA members and Ms Vella in public?
In his last insult-infested opinion piece, Mr Calleja took great offence because a “number of Astrid Vella followers”, no less, “had a go at him” by “calling him a selection of names” (specifically: barbaric, pompous, ridiculous, blinkered, patronising, snide, superficial, arrogant, bullying and so on – he omitted “snooty”, incidentally) because he “dared write four or five paragraphs about their idol”. Now this is truly amazing. Is it possible that, after all these exchanges, Mr Calleja still cannot distinguish between criticism and insults? Does Mr Calleja not realise that the string of epithets with which his opinion piece was variously criticised referred specifically to what he wrote in his opinion piece and not to himself in person? Does Mr Calleja think that insults published by a columnist are so sacrosanct that they should be left unchallenged?
Mr Calleja even exploited the mere fact that my letter was signed with an initial rather than full name, to imply that I am a coward by virtue of being “afraid of putting (my) full name down in the newspaper”. I will not even stoop to respond to an insult of such appalling bad taste and banality.
As Mr Calleja has so gracelessly demonstrated with his renewed torrent of insults, you can never win with some of our columnists who think they can keep on throwing rotten eggs at people from the safety of their column. Sadly, they often have the last word too. Even people who work selflessly for the preservation of what is good in our country are fair game for their insults. This is disgusting.
G. Debono