cheaper safer healthier bras please.
and cheaper, less painful breast exams (please naman, no more scary and expensive old school mammograms)!
here’s my friend Anina, with what is fit for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month that is October.
cheaper safer healthier bras please.
and cheaper, less painful breast exams (please naman, no more scary and expensive old school mammograms)!
here’s my friend Anina, with what is fit for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month that is October.
a friend and twitter/facebook contact was asked this today. that he’s a boy apparently didn’t matter. right now of course, what we’re told is this: that what matters is love. Robin and Mariel have fallen in love and have gotten married, and as Tina Monzon-Palma attests, you can see it in their eyes.
and yes, we grant them love. that’s easy enough. do we grant them credibility? that is the question. and this is what the above question’s about.
so would i? marry Robin Padilla, i mean? well, i’d begin my answer with:
(1) that i understand his appeal, this bad boy action star dirty rugged image, the one that just works with his history as a bad boy, and the way his icon has been created/fashioned/rehabilitated/ revived so it may keep at being the quintessential Pinoy macho.
(2) which is connected to this: in the midst of metrosexuality as capital, his value as Pinoy macho has shot through the roof because there really is no one else like him. add to this the fact of a divorce from longterm wife Liezel, and tadah! binata na ulit si Robin. oh, the appeal of that! (yes, i’ve swooned elsewhere.)
but is he marrying material? interesting question. in truth it never seemed like Robin was married. ever. because when we imagine marriage, we imagine it in the sense that the husband doesn’t flirt on nationwide television with the women he’s paired with in movies and on tv. in the sense that he is loyal and a one-woman-man. in the sense that we don’t hear news of him getting it on with other girls while he’s married.
add to all this the layer of celebrity, the kind that has allowed them, the couple and their managers, to have a plan. this might be contrary to their press releases, but really, you can’t tell me that your wedding in India was a surprise even to you both, when all of it (including what I was wearing, nandon! Mariel squealed) is on the next issue of Starstudio Magazine. you cannot say that this is about a love that is private and only yours, when you were prepared for a photoshoot with obviously choreographed and staged poses at the Taj Mahal. i do not doubt that there’s love there, but also there’s celebrity. and there’s capital. there are obviously their careers, now bound together into one career that’s about the two of them.
the lowest point in all this of course, was the media’s bombardment of these images. i don’t care that the showbiz talkshows feature it again and again, or that it’s in the chikaminute segment on Saksi and showbiz news on TV Patrol. but to actually deem it as breaking news? in the midst of everything else that’s of national interest, goodness gracious, why o why?
realize that this isn’t about the public wanting to know about Robin and Mariel. it’s about news and public affairs departments deciding that this is important enough to give to the public right away.
anyone who knows me would know that i am all for love at first sight, for swift courtships and secret marriages. i am all for falling quickly and easily, because that does happen, and sometimes it does work. but to bombard us with this particular love, given the trappings it comes in? and to deem it as important and valuable as the aftermath of the hostage crisis, and P-Noy’s trip to the States.
ah, but undoubtedly the Robin and Mariel story meant ratings. the kind that P-Noy might not be getting? and in which case, good job media practitioner! good job on losing your credibility.
next time i want more relevant news, i’ll watch my showbiz talkshow.
It seems fitting to write this now that Noynoy has finally taken responsibility for the August 23 hostage tragedy. And yes that is what it was, in fact it was a crisis, by 12 nn, if you were watching it from 9AM, like I was. In fact if you were watching it from the very beginning, when all it was was a minor news report, with no live footage yet, you’d know (1) to thank media, for once, and (2) that it was always Noynoy’s call, always Malacanang’s call, and it was obvious that here, the call was to NOT do anything other than watch local officials, who is now apparently only Isko Moreno for the City of Manila. in fact, we saw him so much during the hostage crisis, that I almost forgot Mayor Lim was, in fact, Mayor.
I also forgot we had a president. Pramis. Early in the day, the question was which action star cum senator would come to the rescue, my bet was Jejomar himself, though he ain’t action star or senator, but you get my drift. Over lunch, I wondered what was taking so long. By meryenda, my question was WTF?
But of course the past month also meant many things other than the hostage taking that was allowed to turn into a tragedy. At the end of month two there was sudden silence about Hacienda Luisita, after all that noise in the beginning of the month, with Christian Monsod calling the HL lawyer out on what it was they were actually doing to farmers, that is, making them believe that what they were getting was all they were due. There too, were press releases on the plan to reconfigure basic education into 12 years, which of course the Magsaysay Awardees have said is beside the point, and really seems to be a decision that’s without common sense. Any sane person can see that it isn’t quantity, it’s quality. This is even more true for the public school system, but how many of the higher Dep Ed officials have entered a public school in the past two years? That is the question. An even better question? Why aren’t relevant organizations and partylists, teachers and parents, being consulted about, and listened to, in relation to this major change in a system off of which they live and have been created? And let’s not forget that fab moment when P-Noy said that at the end of the day, he is the commander in chief, and therefore Rear Admiral Feliciano Angue had no right to question the demotion he had been given. Well.
Ah, but then these things have been overshadowed yes? By the aftermath of the hostage crisis and the death of innocent foreigners. Suffice it to say that we deserve it all, everything the world has to say, and even more so after the bungled reaction(s) of government, including P-Noy’s post-crisis. And while I agree with de Quiros that it’s better late than never, goodness gracious, that can only be true if the late reaction is in fact the correct one. It is beyond me how a president with a communications group could be so messed up in, well, communicating.
But maybe it’s no surprise. After all, we have media that can barely survive the aftermath of the hostage tragedy, too. Yes, there should be a lot of shame here, flunking the test and all. At least GMA 7 turned upon itself and chose to be reflexive right away, though it’s difficult to forgive Mel Tiangco for asking about P-Noy’s love life at the presscon. ABS-CBN 2’s Maria Ressa was on a roll on Twitter the whole time the hostage taking was going on, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to be apologetic. Instead, she is going to burn bridges, and put salt in HK Chinese wounds. And now that Pia Hontiveros has written about her experience on the ground (we saw Pia on TV when there was talk that Mendoza wanted media people to go into the bus), and Patricia Evangelista too, on her take about P-Noy’s handling of it, this becomes the easy question: pray tell, ABS-CBN News and Public Affairs, was there a memo?
Are the Lopezes finally burning that Aquino bridge?
Abangan.
*because if the Aquino sisters are already counting down the months to their brother’s and family’s freedom from us all, seeing us as the burden in their lives as if their brother didn’t run for office, well, this honeymoon’s obviously over.
It is rare to meet a woman you would trust with your life, but here was Cheche Lazaro, telling me about why she was retiring, what it is she’s most proud of, and where she will go from here—it was difficult not to be overwhelmed. After all, Cheche’s Probe Productions has so many awards tucked under its belt, and even more achievements that are invisible and non-material.
One such intangible honor is this: for my generation (I was born in the ‘70s), The Probe Team was a crucial touchstone for journalism, known for going the extra mile, crossing that roaring river, and taking a free fall off of a cliff—all for the possibility of a story, something the Philippines has always had in abundance, with too few tellers to tell them. Journalism was (and in some ways still is) a battlefield, fraught with danger and opponents, with the possibility of things exploding just under one’s feet an ever-present companion. As a truthsayer, Cheche Lazaro has been a hero in this field for a long time, so her retirement in many ways marks the end of an era.
the irony should not be lost on any of them, really. after all they’re the newly-created, seemingly hi-tech, and youthful (!) aspect of the Noy government, and as the communications group, they should know of the contradictions inherent in their mere existence.
they who are tasked with “communications” different and separate and new(?) from what we’ve seen as the office of the press secretary all these years. but save for putting up twitter and facebook accounts, and a website, we have yet to hear and see why this is important at all. ironically, they speak of this as if it’s a new and fancy creature that’s all about the Noy government’s notions of change. but really.
you do not need a whole office to create websites and accounts, nor do you need a whole bunch of new people who are purportedly adept at communicating. look at Gang Badoy’s Dear Noynoy. and really Manolo Quezon III’s (now member for the communications group) websites. it seems that all it would take is to hire techies for these sites, and then have Noynoy do the good things that are worth writing about.
but talk about this communications group inevitably leads to how we, the people, are this government’s new boss, and in which case, that this is one way to connect with the citizenry. true true. but really, you will respond to each and every citizen’s complaint? that Quezon and Ricky Carandang believe they can do this is the strangest of things; that they joined government for something that has yet to be defined and constructed and proven necessary (at this point!) is even stranger.
the truth is, you don’t need a whole office of three people to do this. you need a whole fluggin’ call center. I can complain to you easily about 40 horrid things that government in this country has done to me. I bet my parents will have double that, my brother maybe 30 because he’s been gone a while. add my one barkada of 4 people x 40 complaints, another barkada of 4 x 40 complaints, and easily that makes 550 complaints.
and I tell you that these are the valid complaints, nothing on Kris (because they deem that irrelevant don’t they), and just one each on Hacienda Luisita (lest we be called the noisy minority that is the Left when the question should be: why aren’t your activists noisy to begin with?). I can tell you that mine will range from horrible facilities in the public schools I’ve studied in to corruption in education, from the convicted Aquino-Galman boys who have been suffering in jail for far too long, for something that they insist they didn’t do, to the hazy crazy fraternity wars that are all encompassing but which we don’t know a lot about. mine will come from my experiences as a teacher across the different universities, and as an activist teacher who spoke to real live public school teachers about their impoverished lives. mine will come from the violence I’ve experience at rallies, the violence inflicted on activists, and this continued violence: P-Noy refuses to put his foot down and Free the Political Prisoners!
the one thing I wish he would take from his mother, the one thing he doesn’t seem to want to do.
where does this communications group even begin to imagine the possibility of (1) responding to these complaints, (2) justly choosing which ones are “valid”, and (3) that we, the complainants, are the bosses here?
Quezon though points out a more complex job, and this one is infinitely interesting:
if messaging is the task, then please begin with taking down those billboards and tarpaulins with Noynoy saying “Mabuhay ang Mabuting Pilipino!” it’s uncomfortable to be told by my president longlive the good Pinoy, when it’s entirely possible that i will not be considered as such given his standards. same goes for those tarpaulins with Noy and Binay saying “Kayo ang Boss Namin.” as if naman. to have these slogans on the streets makes it seem like hard sell, and really, like it is a lesson being ingrained in our heads. is it suppose to make us feel good about this government? i’d feel good about a government that wasn’t spending on billboards and tarpaulins, to tell you the truth.
too, given advertising on our streets alongside the remnants of Bayani Fernando: pink and blue fences, footbridges, toilets! they must realize that sometimes it’s a reminder of what’s just so wrong on our streets, the cleaning of which should’ve been the first thing done by government. with “Bawal Tumawid, Nakamamatay!” or a Kris Aquino billboard selling appliances within sight, the Noy-Bi tarps and the Noy billboards just seem like advertisements too, that just might be as dangerous as crossing the streets of EDSA.
but maybe this isn’t the point? because there’s also the editorial aspect of it, speechwriting (ooh, how they celebrated after the SONA ‘no?), and the creation of identity. which seems ironic really, as we all know what kind of identity this presidency wants to establish: that of being less than liable for the state of the nation. after all they just began by pointing a finger at who’s responsible for this mess, and throwing the ball on our court: Noy can’t do this alone, we must begin with ourselves.
which is all true, but haven’t we all been helping this country all this time? i pay my taxes, follow the law, involve myself in issues in many ways all this time, and yet. it takes two years for me to get my SSS benefit, i had to put out more than an old business was earning just to renew my permits, have dealt with too many a corrupt public official. i’ve suffered in the face of the civil service code, have been oppressed by both the public and private school system, have lived with very little and delayed pay, and almost no benefits. i have suffered because of the lack of a reproductive health bill that protects the mother, that makes medical institutions more respectful of women’s rights to decide on their and their baby’s lives.
having lived through this, as many others have lived longer with it, there’s nothing in the messages that this government has sent that relieves me, or makes me hopeful. the small solutions – catch a tax evader here, a tax evader there – aren’t what will make me proud. it’s the bigger ones. revise the system, revise the aspects of it that fail to work. talk about education and what it is that two private school officials (Fr. Luistro for Dep Ed and Licuanan for CHED) would know of the public school system that is in the throes of corruption, literally and figuratively. and really, the Aquino sisters giving away school supplies doesn’t solve a thing. not one thing.
or maybe all the communications group needs to begin with is this: try and be more credible. because saying that Ricky Carandang was to begin with on Noynoy’s side, even when he was working as a journalist in ABS-CBN, has debunked altogether the whole network’s press releases about being unbiased throughout the campaign and in the present. of course that has always been hard to believe about ABS-CBN, but the Carandang question adds another layer to this judgment of the Lopez-owned media empire, and its relationship with the Aquinos. sayang talaga the credibility that Maria Ressa had tried so hard to work on for the news and public affairs division.
oh well, but that’s their loss. of credibility, i mean. and of relevance. and of being seen as objective and critical actors in the newly staged performance that is the Noynoy presidency.
a badly-directed variety show circa 1990s for the inauguration? check!
interviews with image consultants and couturiers for Noy’s outfits? check!
writing the script for this show that seems to be on technical rehearsals within its 100 days? check!
a disbelieving citizen that wants to be surprised, has no institution to answer to, and is as independent as people come: check check check.