I have to admit that one of the best ways to unwind after a bad week is to plop in front of the box and watch a Kurosawa film. Kurosawa films just erase all the bad vibes of the week. And in Kurosawa’s films, Seppuku was not an unfamiliar feature.

Seppuku being the much acclaimed and gory ritual suicide method reserved for the Samurai, Japan’s unforgotten warriors.

But if you are in not in the habit of watching an Akira film, you could substitute by zapping to Super One and watching Gonzi be interviewed by the Labour party on Vici-Versa.

Yes, the Labour party not that chap that goes by the name of Charlon.

If this was not fully blown Seppuku, what was?

I feel sorry for Lawrence Gonzi and I suggest that the person who egged on the Prime Minister to sit in a minefield called Super One be taken out to gym for a serious work-out.

To even imagine that a Super One journalist who answers and acts directly upon orders from the Labour party administration is about to offer the Prime Minister a sporting chance is more than just wishful thinking.

Sending a Prime Minister on Super One is suicide. Period. Stop.

There is a lot to say about the PM’s interview on Super One.

First of all, if the PM thought that by visiting Super One he would be driving home the point that there is a contrast between himself and Alfred Sant – who did not accept an invitation to visit NET – then really someone should pick up the phone and tell Lonzu that there is no point being a kamikaze in politics.

I can tell Lonzu this from experience.

But though if I have unkind thoughts for the PM’s suicidal mission at Super One, allow me to shoot down the high esteem some people have for the so-called journalist by the name of Charlon Gouder.

Charlon is not the independent minded journalist the world yearns for. He is more of a political ventriloquist. He is someone who follows his orders carefully, dutifully and diligently.

That does not make one a good journalist. It makes one a good follower, a loyalist, a doer, a yes man… but not a journalist.

Charlon reminds me of that domesticated lion one comes across in a circus. The one where the Boris the lion tamer assisted, by a skimpily clad Russian princess, takes his big pimply head and dangles in the mouth of Charlon, I mean the lion.

There in the circus, Charlon the lion gives the impression of being a beastly carnivore perfectly suited to scare off any other animal and roar like in one of those promos from a Hollywood film.

Charlon the lion has of course often displayed his shiny canines to circus loving folk. But if he was returned to the wild, Charlon the Circus lion would turn out to be a rather useless high carnivore in the Animal Kingdom.

And that is what our Prime Minister should have been told.

Here is someone who cannot imagine how it feels to criticise the Labour party or to put an embarrassing question to Alfred Sant.

Like his predecessors who carried the propaganda torch at Super One, Charlon is tainted for having put himself in the unenviable position of fronting Labour’s political campaign.

There is nothing wrong with that, but then Gouder should not expect to be treated with kid gloves.

In his attempt to embarrass the PM, Gouder dragged a certain Woods, the brother of a man the Labour party crucified for having been involved in a bribery scandal.

Woods’ brother is in other words facing corruption charges. He was an official in the secretariat of Louis Deguara’s ministry and was allegedly involved in taking bribes for speeding up early retirement for certain individuals.

The Labour party has a special policy for corruption cases. They call it zero tolerance. Not an original term, it was coined by a brutish police officer who served under former Republican New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani who wanted to stamp out criminality in the Bronx. But when it came to the ‘Woods’ case, the Labour party conveniently takes its zero tolerance policy, stuffs it somewhere out of reach and finds absolutely no problem whipping their opponent with the arguments of someone who is crying wolf because his brother was caught in some very serious bribery cases.

So farewell, zero tolerance.

Before he ended his interview Charlon sort of reminded the PM of how well he had been treated at Super One. I guess someone should have told him thank you.

He shook the PM’s hand by half outstretching his left hand to the PM’s left hand whilst at the same time thanking his sponsor – a local winery.

What better way to ridicule the PM who was already sitting very low in his chair?

I have heard about Mario Tabone, the politically appointed chairman of Heritage Malta. But I never expected him to react to last Sunday’s article in such a way. The whole story is reported in this newspaper so surely it does not need to be repeated here. But before I go on, I cannot understand how Tabone based his press conference on what Sgarbi told to a third person who was sub-contracted by Heritage Malta in the first place.

But a number of things need to be noted before I switch off for the weekend.

Mario Tabone does not run his own personal agency, but our national agency. He has no right to decide whom to invite to a press conference or not. And as long as we pay for his salary then he cannot choose whom to like or not to like. I would be very surprised if his press conference had the blessing of his minister.

If it did then it would mean that the minister Zammit Dimech has decided to wage war on the press – something which is not in Zammit Dimech’s DNA.

In eight years at MaltaToday, no government official has ever used the language Mario Tabone chose to use in his press conference.

In all these years, where Malta’s heritage has been threatened by outside development, illegal development or insane policy decisions, Mario Tabone never saw fit to call out to the press and regurgitate over some developer or politician. Why he saw Che Guevara Red with MaltaToday, beats me.

Perhaps the silliest comment was Tabone’s argument that we never show up for Heritage events and that is why he did not have us along. It is of course not true. He was my number two guest after Austin Gatt on Reporter. But I guess he is confusing the drinks and canapés sessions with the coverage of events.

In our busy schedule here at MaltaToday we do not have the luxury of sipping fine alcohol or swallowing silly small boats of pastry full of cholesterol munchies.

At MaltaToday we are after stories, not platitudes. And I for one, have a very short fuse for small talk.

Mario Tabone, with the Ministers’ and government’s blessing, is welcome to wage war on MaltaToday. He is free to do so, with all the consequences that come with wars.

But he had better register this. There are few public appointed officials who have won wars with the free press. Mario Tabone is not going to be the exception.

The strategy group of the Nationalist party met last Friday and not last week, as reported in the Labour press. I see there is some concern over the higher income bracket who are resting comfortably in the undecided block.

Good to know!

sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt