The good news is that last Sunday’s MaltaToday was the most interesting English-language newspaper I have read in nineteen years of visiting and now living in Gozo. It was full of thoughtful, well-argued articles by people with no political axe to grind. I wish I’d discovered your paper earlier.
The bad news is that I have a moan. Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned but I have always hated hearing women swear (I don’t go a lot on men swearing monotonously either). Is it better or worse when a woman swears in print? Better, I suppose, because no one has to listen to it. But it is also worse, because although she might hesitate to use such language in front of (her own) children, she cannot control the age of her readership.
You can guess who I’m talking about? Yes, it’s Mona, she of the Meals. I like her racy, pacy journalism. Her whiplash tongue, when she chooses to use it, is never less than fair. And she does a good job in helping to raise standards in restaurants and helping the punter to choose which restaurants to go to and which to avoid. But last week’s article contained the following:
‘Nobody... would give a flying fart’ – ‘Bloody hell’ – ‘Doves... not shitting once...’ – ‘The desserts were a bloody disaster...’ – ‘They should take the damn thing off the menu...’.
Opinions may differ on whether of all this is swearing or not, but surely we can agree that it is coarse and none of it is ladylike. It just puts me in mind of juvenile adolescents who think it’s clever to swear.
Michael Winner, who has been at the business longer than she has in the UK Sunday Times, manages to inform, entertain and infuriate without using any coarse language. Cannot Mona?
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