Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/969423
Opinion 25 maltatoday SUNDAY 15 APRIL 2018 verbal slagging off here and there? (Which I invited myself... and which, in any case, is par for the course for anyone who shares his own opinions in public?) I fail to see why not. After all, unlike all those other slogans... it's actually true: I am Raphael Vassallo, whether I like it or not. (Or to say the same thing in French – a language I have just discovered lends itself admirably to rhyme – 'Oui, c'est vrai... Je suis ca, en effet...') But I'd be the first to agree that it would be absurdly out of place... if not downright insulting to others who did, in fact, pay a terrifying price for exerting their freedom of speech. Heck, even Popeye the Sailor Man has more right to that slogan than myself... or some of the other cases where it was used. The cartoon 'Popeye' was, in fact, censored on a number of occasions... some episodes were banned from TV, because of their less-than- f lattering depiction of the Japanese in World War Two, for instance. From that perspective, 'Je suis Popeye le Sailor Man, Poop, Poop!' no longer comes across quite as 'deliberately provocative' as I fully intended it to be in the opening paragraphs. That alone should tell us something about the danger of misapplying a powerful slogan, so that it eventually loses all its punch. That should tell us something about the danger of misapplying a powerful slogan, so that it eventually loses all its punch