This ongoing farce all over the globe of protesters insisting they have the freedom of refusing to follow anti-Covid19 rules or get vaccinated has included some huge, ugly scenes in places like Paris, London, Rome and Berlin. Mecca places for culture and goodwill, one always thought. Instigated by a bunch of lunatic conspiracy theorists, among them even millionaire religious zealots, these protesters can be flushed down into just one category: egoists.
The world established the value and effectiveness of vaccination a long, long time ago. Health and medical scholars have all along described vaccination as one of the top 10 achievements of public health in the 20th century. But the same protests and vilification of the jab occurred at the very inception of this life-saving procedure. Opposition to the smallpox vaccine, for example, in England and the United States during the mid to late 1800s led to comic situations where people were portrayed as turning into cattle on taking the jab.
In the present-day circumstances, I hate to say it, but many of us were shouting hooray every time a vociferous anti-vaxxer got the virus and, well, vanished into the oblivion where protests and vaccines no longer mean a thing. It sounds cruel, but one has to see it from the perspective of the health authorities who have been under siege for the past two years and the only thing they cannot contend with is the selfishness of individuals and large groups of individuals who take on science on the basis of some obscure religious belief or utter ignorance.
Australians have rightly not been too complimentary about their government over the way it has handled the pandemic, but no one could argue with Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he labelled the anti-lockdown protests in Sydney as selfish and self-defeating.
It all reminds me of George Harrison’s 1970 Beatles song I me mine, which delves into ancient Hindu texts that denounce the ego in favour of universal consciousness. It is also often used by religious and secular scholars in their teachings on egoism.
We have had our minuscule share of anti-Covid19 protesters, the culmination being the illegal gathering in Valletta to display their witlessness. Last reports had said the Police have been tracking those responsible, but nothing more has been heard. Perhaps it makes more sense to ignore the small-time, local imitators than giving them an extra platform in court.
Not so in the case of those among them who have smudged walls all over St Paul’s Bay and other localities with graffiti saying “You are not asymptomatic, you are stupid”, “Covid is fake”, “Covid is a hoax” and, in a less Shakespearean tone, “Is not a vaccine is an experiment”. Just throw them into a cell and make them listen to I me mine a thousand times, at least until they come out begging for the jab.
With all due respect
The Maltese have come to love biographies and autobiographies especially. It was a pretty limited genre of writing, particularly in the vernacular. But a good number of such publications in the past 20 years or so, featuring Mabel Strickland, Archbishop Michael Gonzi, Dom Mintoff (about whom there has been a seemingly endless stream), Eddie Fenech Adami, Patri Feliċjan Bilocca and several others, have since filled the void left by Herbert Ganado’s now classical work Rajt Malta Tinbidel.
The latest highlights on the market, unfortunately both written in English, are Mark Montebello’s hefty biography of Dom Mintoff, yes, another on the great man, The tail that wagged the dog and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s off-the-beaten-track autobiography With all due respect. Both controversial in their own different ways, but highly distinct at the same time. I will stick to Pullicino Orlando’s contribution which fills yet another gap in the world of socio-political works in both Maltese and English.
With all due respect is a big name-dropping bitch of a book written with a sharp wit and no one famous personality that has thus far featured in the author’s life, from Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat to Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi, avoids getting the feel of its steel. There is actually a charm and a twinkling sense of humour in the ex-PN (and almost PL) MP’s fast-moving work. It is fun personified, hilarious in parts, highly entertaining and, at the most, provides excellent reading.
There are some very funny and curious stories in it, making of the book a marvellously readable account of life inside and outside the political labyrinth Pullicino Orlando visited and mustered in a career that was as abruptly cut short as it was successful at its inception. His book shows the man is nothing if not an individualist, a raconteur of style and sophistication, a writer with imagination and a sense of pace, even when he deals with personal dilemmas.
Of course autobiographies are there to be analysed and interpreted in interminable ways, as Ganado’s four-volume masterpiece still is after no less than 47 years since its publication. Likewise, there will be many who contest or contradict Pullicino Orlando’s anecdotal memoirs, just as there will be many who detect an honest sense of pride and sincerity in them. Not one autobiography has ever been declared a bible, but it takes one’s personal perspective to help find a parallel one in With all due respect.