HUMOUR in our life is as necessary as the AIR [ no matter how foul ] we inhale and exhale ; and the WATER [ in the case of Malta – Bottled Water ! ] we should all make it a point to consume a reasonable amount of as part of our daily survival subsistence.

Without HUMOUR , or to be more precise, without a sense of Humour, MAN would be a denuded creature indeed deprived of an essential element of what makes holistically a Man. Any human being living Life deprived of this essential element is bereft of a necessity which immediately reduces that being to below the par of normality.

No speech is to be delivered or written – for any occasion – if not peppered with a dose of humour: for instance Queen Elizabeth II in her 2006 Christmas Message made reference to a grandchild who on being told to enquire from the grandparents about life `s experiences immediately retorted by asking the grandparents whether they remembered the stone age! A humoristic intrusion in a text, at an appropriate moment, rekindles a waning interest in the listener, particularly at the point when the deliverer desires to impart the key message of the delivery.

HUMOR in a realistic context is healthy in life. By realistic context is meant superimposing an intellectually-funny perception on real-life events or occurrences that are classified as sombre or serious in themselves. Hence when it is stated that Malta runs as in a Pantomime or a Banana Republic , the implication is obviously that the way or manner serious business is conducted in this country in reality , in instances , appears more like a Pantomime, such as the annual farce when our Representatives walk down Archbishop Street - Valletta , as it were a Corteo , to pay a visit to the Bishops [ who truly are no more than representatives of The Holy See ] at the Ecclesiastical Tribunal Palace where a life-size, imposing ,pigeon-dirt ridden statute of former Archbishop Michael Gonzi hovers over this narrow, potted street!

Of course all this annual ceremony is no more than a mere public show where both sides are scratching each other imagining that they are impressing someone by their mutual solidarity when truly this is not the case though nobody appears to care but for this humorous side of the show!

Humour, not to be confused with Laughter ( which is good medicine ) , is in itself socially very healthy . Evaluated objectively [ something that some find extremely difficult to absorb ] , Humour can be of assistance for an individual to be able to pinpoint personal characteristics that place that individual in uncomplimentary light . As a result a remedy, alternative or a realistic solution may then be attempted to be sought. The only unelected thirty-eighth US President , for example , the late Gerald Ford ( who recently died aged 93 years ) while to his credit not shirking the political responsibility assigned to him [ at a time of great political instability in the US because of Richard Nixon `s resignation due to the Watergate Case ] , well - knowing that he was not the man for the job rather than pretending otherwise , admitted in one of his speeches that he was not a Lincoln but a Ford ! With this sense of humour , President Ford humbly relayed to his critics his awareness that he was not in the circumstances to be compared with the great , sixteenth US President Abraham LINCOLN while humorously comparing the respective surnames or family names to the related quality difference in two of America `s more familiar car brands!

In dire circumstances, a sense of humour may psychologically assist to attenuate the inevitability of the situation. Well-known war-time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill while broadcasting one of his many famous speeches namely the `We shall fight them on the beaches ` morale-booster speech, is purported at one stage to have placed his hands over the microphone and uttered in the studio that ` we shall fight them with bottles of beer as we have nothing else to fight them with ! `.

In times of anxiety, preoccupation, stress and fear , humour is often utilized to obscure the reality of a situation: for instance immediately before being hanged at dawn on Saturday, 30 December 2006, as witnessed by Judge Munir Haddad, a cleric who was present asked Saddam Hussein to recite some spiritual words. Saddam did so but with sarcasm ! [Those were his last words].

Humour defuses a tense atmosphere, breaks the ice in introductions, attracts attention , enlightens an environment, is a powerful weapon in a communicator `s arsenal [ be it politician, man-of-letters , clergyman, teacher, lawyer, ordinary citizen, and so forth ], and is an ideal asset for socializing.

The trend in Malta relating to a sense of humour is by and large still rather reserved. Our leading public personalities in general may be humorous per se , but otherwise lack a sense of humour – this in most fields of the public spectrum. One might gauge this from the ridiculously high number of libels that are filed, particularly in the political and related social areas . As another general election fast approaches , these are expected to increase on the deluding principle that any sort of publicity is better than no publicity at all ! It is furthermore interesting to observe that practically all libel law suits are filed by men - women apparently utilize other methods to settle their scores!

Malta shows countless signals that both as a nation and on an individualistic level, the virtue of a sense of humour is starkly missing among us. Despite having fully acceded to the European Union, we have not put aside the facts that we are tiny in size , insular geographically which also reflects the mentality of most of our citizens , and that we are also now European Union Citizens with equal rights and obligations as appertain to other European Union citizens of another twenty-six countries with an approximate population of around five hundred million European brothers and sisters !

Despite what is officially uttered, Malta has not yet conceded to the imperative European Union concepts of pluralism and cosmopolitanism : in our daily behaviour , in our broadcasts [ most programmes are so silly and puerile : an award should be established for the most stupid programme – the problem is that there would be so many contenders as to constitute a headache for the judges to which programme to award it to ! ] , in the print media , in our leaders` utterances from whatever social strata these hail, in most public and private activities, the strong signals of claustrophobic insularity are all there for us to witness . We should be more auto critical , laugh louder at ourselves, have a more strongly-defined sense of humour.

The local situation is equally very humorous in the contrasting jackal and hyde way our fellow country folk generally socially react on a number of issues. Thus, where it suits us , we boast ,particularly our vote-alluring politicians in the hypocrisy-riddled two major political parties and the obviously-interested Catholic Curia-oriented persons [ birds of the same feathers……! ] about our staunch Catholicism , the fact that Constitutionally Malta is a Catholic country, how traditional family values are treasured , how we want to protect life from the moment of conception and how we want to be a living example to the remaining 499,600,000 individuals in the other 26 full members of the EU as to the moral correctness of living life. On the other hand , and this is constant daily humour , Corruption in our country has become a Virtue , Arrogance has become an individual, fundamental right [ for those in the Circles of the Circle of the Inner Circles , that is ! ] , the proletariat are being bled dry , proportionately – speaking – obviously and for obvious reasons - Malta has the highest de facto & de iure Separation rates in the EU , Cohabitation is widespread by the thousands, Children born out of wedlock are increasing year by year , Infidelity in Marriages is a by-word , Drug-Trafficking and Drug Abuse are ever augmenting, Paceville is the dirtiest dung in the EU , Blackmail and Nepotism are the order of the day , and the list goes on: some traditional family values we are upholding !

BUT……as our sense of HUMOUR would have it or not have it , Malta, this Blessed Malta , our Beloved Malta , is the only country in the EU to discriminate against its people by not introducing Divorce for its people when it is recognizing simultaneously foreign Divorce Decrees and / or Judgements; to dramatize the Abortion issue under the umbrella of Gift of Life when this hullabaloo is absolutely unnecessary and is only being utilized for political motivations and to give the Catholic Curia some breathing space to clear out a little of its massive, inside mess! By Jove…..what sense of humour or is it merely social / religious / political hypocrisy ? Let `s smile ……[ any comments write to alpha@emmybezzina.org. ]