Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1489838
13 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 11 JANUARY 2023 OPINION AS with so many famous one-liners, Mark Twain usually gets all the credit for the apho- rism, 'Truth is stranger than fic- tion'. (And fair enough: he did, after all, write those exact words in 1897). But it was actually Lord By- ron who had first uttered them around 70 years earlier, in Can- to 14 of 'Don Juan': "'Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange, / Stranger than fiction…" Nonetheless: at the risk of being disowned by my father – who, as some of you may know, sub- scribes to the view that: 'Nobody does it better than Byron!' - I'm going to go with the Mark Twain version, for this article. Because unlike the great Brit- ish Romantic poet: Twain also explains exactly WHY reality is sometimes so decidedly 'unre- al'. What he actually wrote was: "Truth is stranger than fiction, […] because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." He was quite right, you know. Consider, for instance, the fol- lowing story (which headlined yesterday's news all over the world): 'Harry and Meghan's California town ordered to evacuate over… mudslide fears!' (I kid you not.) I mean, how's that for 'life im- itating art'? Honestly, though: if that were the synopsis of a fic- tionalised novel, based on the recent 'Harry and Meghan' de- bacle (with all its 'mudslinging', 'muck-raking' associations)… and the author actually chose to end it with Harry and Megan's entire adoptive town, being lit- erally 'swept away by a cataclys- mic deluge' (and a MUDSLIDE, of all implausibly-appropriate things…) Sorry, but it would just never work. No publisher would even touch it with a barge-pole: they'd say it's 'too allegorical'… too 'reminiscent of Mediaeval Moral- ity Plays' (or Dante's 'Inferno', for that matter), where the 'punish- ment always fits the crime'… Not, in a word, 'realistic' enough, to be ever be taken seriously; even as a work of fiction. But then, along comes Reality itself: and, hey presto! Suddenly, 'shit starts getting real'…. And almost literally, too. Just one day after Harry's memoirs went out on sale: the entire city of Montecito in California (Oprah Winfrey, and all) really IS facing mass-evacuation, on account of the threat of flash-floods, mud- slides, and… well, the sort of cat- aclysmic horrors you'd expect from something like The Holy Bible (Sodom and Gomorrah spring to mind.) So make no mistake: 'truth' can clearly get away with far, FAR more, in the way of implausibili- ty, than 'fiction' could ever dream of… But even the Harry-and- Meghan example simply pales to insignificance, compared with the second-most widely reported in- ternational 'Breaking News' sto- ry of the week: the one in which Maltese satirist Matt Bonanno was arrested and charged, with – again, I kid you not – 'plotting to carpet-bomb the entire town of Bugibba (Gordon Pace Manche, and all) to oblivion'… …which is – let's face it - almost indistinguishable from the sort of satirical humour that Matt Bo- nanno himself is generally known for, anyway. So much so, that my next sentence practically writes itself, with no actual input from my end: 'BIS-SERJETA'??!!!' But in any case: I'm far too late for this particular party, to bother explaining all the reasons WHY this is such an astonishingly ab- surd – and alas, woefully 'serious' – state of affairs. Suffice it to say for now, that… … when satirical comedians like Matt Bonanno 'threaten' to oblit- erate large urban centres such as Bugibba, by means of a military tactic commonly defined as: "a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land" (of the kind histor- ically associated with Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, and even Malta in WW2…) .. well, it's not unlike when the supporter of a local football team [Note: to avoid the otherwise cer- tainty of criminal reprisals, 'no names mentioned'] posts an on- line comment, before an all-im- portant Premier League game, to the effect of: 'OUR team is going to shit all over YOUR team, just you wait and see!" [followed, as always, by the inevitable 'Lemon' emoticon.] Now: it doesn't exactly follow, does it, that the football fan in question would be genuinely ex- pecting those players to come out of their dressing rooms, and – instead of lining up for the team photo – somehow conspire to physically 'defecate' all over every single player of the opposing team? In front of crowd of several thousand supporters, by the way: including, no doubt, at least one inappropriately-kitted Tourism Minister? [Honestly, Clayton: what – if anything at all – were you even thinking?] Leaving aside the sheer improb- ability of it all – for one thing, those players would have to syn- chronise their laxatives, so that they'd all take effect at precisely the same moment… and let's face it: half of them probably can't even synchronise their own pass- es on the football pitch... [Runs for cover, stage left]. My point, however, is that: when football fans post that sort of thing… they're not exactly ex- pecting to be taken LITERALLY. And it's probably just as well, too: for one thing, because I shudder to even imagine what the conse- quences would be, if something like that were to really happen (though I can very easily imagine how the 'carpet-bombing' of plac- es like Valletta, Floriana, Hamrun or Paola, might suddenly become an entirely plausible scenario…) And for another: because I'm fairly certain that there IS actually a law against 'shitting on people', somewhere in the Criminal Code – in fact it's right there, in 'Article Number Two' (Groan!): "Thou shalt not publicly defecate upon others, under any circumstanc- es whatsoever (unless thou art a pigeon, of course – or maybe a Maltese construction magnate – in which case, thou canst pretty much shit all over whatsoever, or whomsoever, thou pleaseth…)" So if the rival supporter decided to take that taunt quite as literal- ly, as the Malta Police Force are doing with Matt Bonnano's Face- book post… its author would now be facing the possibility of up to two fines of E25,000 apiece! (Or whatever the equivalent penalty is, for 'incitement to public defe- cation')… Because this is where 'shit' starts to get decidedly 'unreal': it's not as though Matt Bonanno is even be- ing charged with any crime that can be defined as 'hate-speech', or 'incitement' (to 'violence', 'ha- tred'… or anything at all, really). In fact, I wasn't even joking when I wrote, above, that the po- lice are taking the 'carpet-bomb- ing' motif in wholehearted ear- nest. They did not charge Matt Bonanno with violating any 'free- dom of expression' laws (or even libel, for that matter). Instead, they accused him of breaching Article 48(d): which "prohibits the use of electronic communica- tion networks or apparatus for a purpose other than their intend- ed use" [Note: whatever the heck THAT's supposed to be; but nev- er mind, for now]…." … and – even more bizarrely – with breaching Article 49, which states that "individuals who use the internet to threaten to COM- MIT A CRIME [my emphasis] are liable to a fine of €25,000…" Effectively, then, Matt Bonan- no really is being charged with 'threatening to commit a crime'. And given that his actual words were: 'Relocate River of Love to Buġibba, then carpet bomb. Two birds with one stone'… I make that 'two crimes', by my count. Crime 1: the forcible relocation of NGO 'River of Love', and all its members, to another location – against their own desires and in- tentions; and through the implied use of physical coercion – for the express purpose of committing: Crime 2: annihiliating them utterly… along with the rest of Bugibba's civilian population (numbering, according to the lat- est census, 23,112) in what would effectively qualify as a WAR- CRIME, no less (and it would be 'genocide', too: if Bugibba count- ed as an entire nation, instead of a single town…) In any case: both these nefar- ious needs, the police tell us, were genuinely 'intended to be committed' – which, by the way, would also require the assistance, and connivance, of other crim- inal accomplices: so we can also add 'conspiring with others, with criminal intent' to the charge- sheet… …. not to mention 'illicit arms trading': for let's face it… if Matt Bonanno seriously intends to bomb the living shit out of Bugib- ba: he's going to need at least two, maybe three Boeing B-52 Strato- fortresses, or Rockwell B-1 Lanc- ers [note: he'd probably get by with just one Junckers 87 Stuka, of course… but then it wouldn't be 'carpet-bombing', now would it?); as well as the same number of trained pilots, capable of actually flying them in tight formation. (And as we all saw in 'Top Gun: Maverick'… that sort of thing costs a lot of money, you know). And yet, ridiculous as it may all appear: that really IS the crimi- nal case that the prosecution will now have to prove, in court, if it intends to secure a criminal con- viction against Matt Bonanno. And to date, I'm still not sure what worries me more. The fact that life is beginning to imitate art, in all the most surreal – and less laughable – aspects of 'satire'; or the fact that the same Police Force which was so very quick, to take this aburd accusation 'bis-serjeta' kolla'… never actually acted at all, on reports of a much, MUCH more serious death threat: levelled against a group of young women, who had protest- ed against Malta's abortion ban in 2019. As I recall, the exact words were: 'Shoot these bitches in the head one by one, facing each other'. And unlike any amount of 'car- pet-bombing' that Matt Bonanno will ever be capable of inflicting upon Bugibba… that's the sort of threat that – as recent experience has so tragically illustrated, for the umpteenth time – can quite easily be carried out. Truth is weirder than satire… Raphael Vassallo