Should we blame MTV?

1979: four boys attending a Church school, in their blazer and tie, had this friend they had nicknamed Pizu. Pizu was their laughing stock, and their regular victim of foul pranks and macho bullying. Once they forced his head in a toilet bowl and flushed. They laughed their heart out; so did nerdy Pizu. Someone filed a report to the Rector who immediately excluded them from school for a whole week.

In 1979 MTV was not yet on air. And the programme High School Stories: Scandals, Pranks and Controversies was not even on the drawing board.

1981: MTV goes on air, but not in Malta. Once, six boys captured a stray cat, carried it to a field, hung it to a branch of the only tree there was, and set it on fire.

1991: the first marathon-scale graduation ceremony at the University of Malta. During the second session students graduating in Education defied the warnings of the Rector and let loose a number of birds which flew in terror all over the hall. One of them, most probably out of revenge, landed to rest on the Rector's left shoulder.

In 1981 these kids had no knowledge of computers, let alone of the dark sites on the net. In 1991

animal rights consciousness was only a concept promoted by some 'freak' environmentalists, and most probably Animal Cops was not yet watched in Malta.

I don't think there is much need to go further back in time ... but I'll just mention a certain Pierre Rivier living in a small village in France in the nineteenth century who once went on a killing spree, murdering his mother, his sister and his brother in a matter of minutes...without ever having watched MTV or Crime Night on Discovery.

2005: three boys tie their handicapped friend to a chair and enjoy themselves burning parts of his body with a hot lighter in some back room at the open for all Labour Party Club in Rabat. And immediately some start saying that evil is a product of MTV. Others say that lately society has lost all its (former) good values ... especially the young.