As planned, Michelle Muscat swam 14km. That’s what she said she did, and it’s also what her PR team told the media. It was her longest swim yet, except it wasn’t. At the most, she swam eight kilometres. If the event was historic, it’s because it involved the first ever movable finish line in the whole of history.
Does it matter? A lot, actually. But first, let’s get one thing out of the way. I’m happy to assume that Mrs Muscat’s sole intention was to raise money for a cause she genuinely believes in. I also think that an eight-kilometre swim in choppy sea is quite a feat for someone who is not an athlete.
The fact remains that she is guilty of what we might call, to paraphrase someone who was not known for his swimmer’s physique, numerical inexactitude. She said she swam the distance, when she did not. There are three reasons why it is not petty to pay attention.
The first has to do with charity. The fawning point has been made that the truth about the distance matters not one jot, because it was all for a good cause anyway. Besides, the naysayers are green-eyed losers who refuse to see the bigger picture, which is really about doing good.
Rubbish, I’m afraid. Precisely because it was all for charity, the truth matters more, not less. Like gift exchange, charity is not removed from social mores and values. On the contrary, it subsists on them. Giving for a good cause involves a kind of unspoken contract between giver and taker. Among the things that underwrite that contract, honesty happens to be just about the most fundamental.
Sponsored marathon walks are among the less intolerable memories of my schooldays. Our teachers would hand out messy cyclostyled sheets on which you could make out an approximate map of the planned distance. We would do the rounds of the neighbours and try to raise as much money as possible for causes that included the upkeep of the college chapel, new lights for the assembly hall, and such.
What we do expect Mrs Muscat to be is honest, especially when it was all for charity
Now I was not at the time married to a Prime Minister. Nor were our neighbours terribly interested in assembly halls. They gave – a lira, one memorable time – partly out of sympathy, partly to shut me up. And yet, honesty and decency mattered.
None of my donors would have asked for their money back had I pulled a muscle and cut the walk short. But they might have done had I pretended to walk five kilometres but taken the bus for three of them. People don’t like to be lied to, especially not when they’re giving you money. The least they expect is honesty, even if the occasion is a school marathon walk.
On the day of the Historic Swim (more on that later), sea conditions were bad. It would have been perfectly reasonable for Mrs Muscat to just say so. In any case, we don’t expect her to be a top athlete. What we do expect her to be is honest, especially when it was all for charity.
The last bit is particularly important. Thing is, in these cases, dishonesty damages the cause more than it does the protagonist. The Marigold Foundation looks like a perfectly deserving cause, but the 14km swim that wasn’t did it no favours, whatever the brown-nosers might say.
The second reason why we ought to care is that this was not some minor do. Mrs Muscat and her PR team (yes, there’s one for anything this bunch do) built the event up, over weeks, into a major public event. The publicity was jaw-dropping and included prime-time advertising on national television. On the day, the Maltese navy was out in all its might off L-Aħrax. Mrs Muscat wanted us to pay attention, then, and here we are doing so.
Which brings me to 1966, and to Chairman Mao’s Great Historic Swim of the Yangtze. Mao’s PR told the world that he had swum nearly 15km (sounds familiar) in 65 minutes, against a powerful current no less. The news must have made a certain teenager called Mark Spitz resolve never again to wet his toes.
He needn’t have worried, because Mao’s swim is widely considered little more than shameless and deceitful propaganda. He could not have swum that distance in that time if he had a jet ski for breakfast. The point is that when you tell a porky to such dazzling and public promise, you probably deserve the ridicule to match.
Mao’s swim brings me to the third reason why we shouldn’t let this one pass. This time, Mrs Muscat is not to blame. Quite literally in the wake of the Chairman’s feat, the Chinese press, such as it was, reported nothing but greatness. The one or two journalists who might have thought otherwise sadly got in the way of a stray bullet.
No such unfortunate accidents in Malta. There’s a free press here, and it was free to pick up map and ruler and report that Mrs Muscat was being economical with the truth. Instead, we were told that she had “completed her 14km swim”, just as her PR team advised. It was left to some teenager on the social media to write about the Empress’s state of dress.
Now this rather troubles me, because it shows either or both of two things. The press are lazy, or they censor themselves. I’ve a feeling that journalists chose not to investigate the swim that wasn’t, because there was charity involved and good deeds and noble hearts and so on, which would have made them unpopular with their audiences. I’d be wasting time to explain why that’s an unhealthy attitude to be taking.
What’s certain is that the Marigold Foundation had better be looking for a new ambassador, preferably one who doesn’t sneak to the finish line on a bus.