you know that is a term of endearment, for anyone at all who grew up watching you on TV. you are rarely seen as one of them celebrities who should not have turned politician, which does mean you have more credibility as public servant. it helps that you never seemed too gung-ho about being mayor, and you waited for the right time to become so. you seemed more decent than most, is what i mean to say. but then again, what has happened since your May reelection? (more…)
i think Spinbusters does a pretty fantastic job of keeping track of Rappler.com’s foibles, and where my tendency is to generally refuse to even click on any link that leads to that site, in the past year or so, i’ve been clicking more and more. they’ve been messing up.
and no, i don’t even mean the bad writing, or the ungrammatical mood meter — or the mood meter itself as a measure of how people feel about issues (susmiyo, what are we 10 years old?). let me not begin about crowdsourcing, and the-one-thing-worse-than-censoring Pol Medina — making him do choose-your-own-punchline strips. the better to render his commentary toothless, yeah. (more…)
I am the last person to defend SM, and I do think we’ve got enough malls and condos in this country. But one of the first things I asked when the petition to save the Philam Life Theater began to gain ground was: why?
And no, not why did SMDC buy the Philam Life property, but why was this property sold at all?
Yet that doesn’t seem to be a question that many people are asking. Instead we are asking questions about why SMDC needs to build more condos, why it needs to build more malls. Instead we throw expletives at Henry Sy and his empire, and say he is greedy and nothing else, forgetting that while the latter might be true, what drives this greed is the fact that they can afford it. And that the government allows it.
This is not to say it’s right, as it is to ask: who allows oligarchs to buy this country’s lands and services? Why is it even acceptable that basic services are owned by one, two, three families? Whose fault is it that our oldest structures, the ones that are monuments to our past, are being sold, one after the other? Why is the only other option for these structures, neglect and forgetting?
And who is blameless in this oft repeated enterprise of a piece of heritage being lost to time or capitalists, and us all raising our fists too late?
Over on Twitter, Teddy Boy Locsin claims credit for suggesting that actor Robin Padilla be brought to Sabah to help resolve the conflict. Locsin’s take on Robin of course is somewhat limited: he is charismatic, he is handsome, he can make people stop doing what they’re doing, Locsin says.
But in fact Robin’s iconography, his history as icon, reveals how while he might be all these adjectives, what is far larger than his charisma and looks is what he’s done, how he’s involved himself in issues political and religious, how these tie together to reveal a whole image that is in fact quite credible. He is after all one of the more sought after product endorsers of, wait for it, health products.
It’s easy to think that we’ve forgotten Robin’s younger more rebellious self. Of course in the landscape of popular culture in this country, it is highly probable that the Bad Boy title is what makes Robin even more credible. After all, how many of our icons can turn their lives around? (more…)
Bam Aquino promises to bring social entrepreneurship to the Senate. That he is running on that, and his last name (obviously!), is the most vulgar act of political ambition we might see since the Pacquiaos (in the plural!) decided they must all run for government in Gen San (Jinkee for Governor!). At least Jinggoy and JV went through years of being mayor. And yes, I am comparing the Aquinos (Kris included!) to the Estradas.
Such is local politics, and yes that’s a lot of ironic and disgusted exclamation points.
But Bam might be the biggest bummer of all. Check out his website and find that he has no platform – it is as empty as his CV. It’s in bright Cory yellow (because he is proud of the dynasty he is part of), and has as its main navigational tool a sari-sari store filled with objects you can click on. So click on the TV and you get a photo and video gallery, click on the radio and you get soundbites, click on the stack of newspapers and you get news and updates – all favorable of course.
Not surprisingly, you cannot click on any of the goods that are for sale in the sari-sari store. That which is the lifeblood of the space? Bam’s got nothing on there. (more…)