komentaryo

Getting Away With It

Since the ULTRA stampede there seems to be no end to insults added to the injury that is the senseless death of 74 Filipinos and the battery of over 600 others, who remain nameless and faceless, only identifiable by the label masa.

The first insult is the most obvious. Although it took ABS-CBN most of Saturday to take responsibility for the tragedy, when they finally did it also decided to work overtime – and not just in assisting the victims as Tina Monzon-Palma would like to make us believe. In fact, it was pretty obvious that from the beginning, ABS-CBN’s machinery was also working towards damage control, with rhetoric that ranged from “no one wanted this to happen, we are shouldering all expenses, we are doing everything we can to assist the victims of this tragedy, we are taking responsibility” which has of course evolved into “this tragedy is a wake-up call for all of us, to the whole nation, because we are now dealing with the issue of the economy and poverty” as well as “we never treated our audience as animals, we are here for only one reason and that is to entertain”.

This spin of course began with Charo Santos-Concio in pale (peaceful) blue, close to tears, obviously in awe of what had happened; Tina Monzon-Palma in (serene) white, composed and ready to take on the challenge that was the tragedy; and close-ups of the casually-clad ABS-CBN CEO (in a T-shirt and a baseball cap) Gabby Lopez and environmentalist-sister Gina Lopez – both obviously distraught. And then there was Willie Revillame, in tears, and just all over the place. By the afternoon of the tragedy, soundbites from Sharon Cuneta and Joey Reyes via the station’s ETK (showbiz) talkshow were heard, and right there the spin that would be central to damage control began: the real reason for this tragedy is poverty.

A day after the tragedy, ABS-CBN’s biggest and brightest stars, come together in prayer – in public. Televised for their benefit, we are treated to cameras panning the length of pews and across aisles showing ABS-CBN bigwigs with Dolphy and Maricel Soriano, their teen stars and their comediennes, as well as Kris Aquino serving at the altar, all obviously sincere in their grief. And then, the gist of one of their prayers: we are broken and suffering, please heal our ABS-CBN family and guide us in recovering from this trial. And then the CBB (closing billboard) of the mass with the title “Isang Pamamaalam” and one wonders, goodbye to whom? This is perfectly followed by Gary V. opening the variety show ASAP with the song “The Warrior is a Child” – as if speaking of themselves as the child who “lately has been winning battles left and right, but even winners get wounded in the fight”. And a soundbite: people are willing to die for them at ABS-CBN.

Revillame has since been hailed hero by this station; Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino have reiterated that ABS-CBN is helping out in many and various ways, and that they started doing so without being asked; it has been said that they are adopting the families of those who had died for the whole year. As ABS-CBN went back to normal broadcast, its news and current affairs programs as well as their cable news channel ANC continued the spin: Revillame going to each of the wakes of all 74 victims; Gabby Lopez angered by the assertion that the audience had been “treated like animals”; the ABS-CBN Foundation (tax-shield as it is) putting out all the money in order to assist the victims. ANC and shows like The Correspondents have gone on to interview various “experts” on the topic – at least Gigi Grande of the latter had the sense to go for sociologist Randy David who reiterated ABS-CBN’s responsibilities. ANC, on the other hand, has gone into tangential issues: Pinky Webb talking about poverty in this country, and interviewing the wrong resource person – the secretary of the Commission on the Eradication of Poverty who only had government propaganda numbers (only 27% are impoverished in this country!); Cito Beltran talking about debriefing and emotional recovery for victims, as well as looking into the liability of places such as ULTRA and pointing a finger at the city government’s having allowing such a dangerous entrance to the venue; Ces Drilon talking to Michael Tan about the latter’s conclusions on the cultural implications of a tragedy such as this – we are a people that collectively ignores rules and cannot fall in line, we are a people in search of idols.

And therefore, the tragedy?

The biggest and most unforgivable insult of all is the fact that a week after the stampede that killed 74 Filipinos, we continue to prove ourselves incompetent of dealing critically with this tragedy.

Opinion columnists and TV personalities have helped along, if not parroted, the rhetoric of ABS-CBN. Yes, many assert that ABS-CBN, as the organizers, must take responsibility. But practically everyone has zeroed in on various causes of the tragedy – that is, other than the host of a party sending out more invitations than the venue allowed. People have been wont to look at what they call the final analysis, the bigger picture, the bottomline, with many, like Cuneta, asserting that poverty is the reason for this tragedy. Some, like Belinda Olivares-Cunanan and Neal H. Cruz, bring it as high as GMA – she whose responsibility it is to alleviate poverty. And then there are those like Tan, reading the tragedy and saying it is first about idolatry, and then later about a culture of anarchy. This is no different from the many who insist on looking at that crowd and reading them as savages: that stampede, they say, was a mob, this crowd of people were uncivilized creatures who couldn’t, wouldn’t follow simple rules; blame must rest on that person who pushed first. This, even Winnie Monsod accedes to, as she says in her Debate spiel: this is not about poverty, this is about people’s greed, and how they will step on other people just to get what they want.

That day of the incident, when everyone including the Vice President kept mouthing the words “puno’t dulo” I was forgiving; we were all stunned by the incident after all and weren’t ready to point a finger. But now, a week into the tragedy, with ABS-CBN soundbites and images in our heads, with a failed DILG report, and the NBI entering the picture, it just seems like were being way too kind to not point fingers. Or maybe, just plain stupid?

Poverty is the answer to many things, but what is the important question here and now? If we are looking for who could’ve prevented this tragedy, if we are looking for the reason behind this tragedy, if we are looking (as we should) for someone to blame for such senseless deaths, the answer is obvious. The bottomline of this tragedy is ABS-CBN’s lack of preparation, and their underestimation of a hungry, tired, and impoverished crowd’s capability to be rowdy and unruly when lured with the possibility of getting P1 million, and then are told that it would be impossible for them to have that chance. The bottomline is ABS-CBN, proved itself undeserving of the adulation of the masa it says it serves and wants to help, as they did not make sure that this masa would be treated with an organized humane system while waiting for ULTRA gates to open, days before it was suppose to. The bottomline is ABS-CBN chose the ULTRA as venue – bad roads, steep declines, narrow passageways – included, and Wowowee’s producers had command responsibility the moment the people they had invited started to arrive. The bottomline is that Willie Revillame, through ABS-CBN, invited his viewers to come and join their anniversary celebration, dangling money, the house, the jeepney and taxi, and pandering to these masa’s needs and most ardent desires.

The bottomline is really quite simple: ABS-CBN is a capitalist media organization, out to make a profit, on precisely the poverty that many say is the root of all this evil. They may be entertaining this audience along the way, and helping those who are lucky enough to be picked, I will not argue with that. But intention and benevolence is irrelevant to the fact that 74 Filipinos have died and hundreds more were injured on their invitation. This is blood on their hands, no ifs and buts about it.

Poverty is only the context of this tragedy, it is not the bottomline. I do not doubt that it brought the masa there. But it was upon the invitation of Revillame, it was upon the media hype of ABS-CBN, that they flocked to ULTRA oblivious to the lack of a safe, secure and organized system that underlies the “first-come-first-served” invitation. Poverty should not be espoused in the same breath as ABS-CBN’s command responsibility. The more we use the idea of poverty in relation to this tragedy, the higher the probability that ABS-CBN will be able to successfully turn this around and make themselves the victims, if not the heroes, in this all. The more we muddle discussions on the tragedy with big words like poverty, eradication, culture, the more the ABS-CBN machinery will be allowed to abuse the dead, the grieving, and the tragic in the name of profit and ratings. And the greater the possibility that they will get away with it. If they haven’t yet.

Let’s keep an eye on that ball and demand that ABS-CBN pay dearly and equally for the lives lost in that Saturday stampede.

And then let’s talk about poverty, since, as it turns out we all care so much for the masses we say are victimized by this system that has impoverished them. While we’re at it, let’s talk about the farmers of Hacienda Luisita, the workers of Nestle, as we do the urban poor who flocked to ULTRA. Let’s make the past and present governments pay for their irresponsibility. Let’s deal with the fact that many of us only want to speak of poverty now, that 74 people have died for nothing and no one, in ULTRA. Then let’s prove that we can keep our collective eye on that bigger ball. And involve ourselves in solving that bigger problem.

As for Mareng Winnie, I tell you this: try living off of one meal a day, or minimum wage, and let’s see if you don’t start making a distinction between greed and desperation.

komentaryo

Where Has All the Laughter Gone?

published in PCIJ i-Report, the investigative reporting quarterly, of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Issue no. 4, November 2005

FIVE YEARS ago, we had a president who made as much fun of himself as everyone else did. He even had his very own joke book and his very own think tank to make up stories and jokes that revolved around his supposedly being uneducated, as well as his being uncouth and unpresidential. Then came his impeachment trial, which provided us with all kinds of material for comedy.

At that time, everyone was fair game for parodies and jokes that came fast and furious in the form of text messages and email, standup routines, and comic strips. There was no escape. But since the Internet was and is the most liberal and liberating of media to work with—uncensorable, untouchable, maybe even incomprehensible to many—so much was published from the computers of hi-tech Pinoys who could deal with the Estrada presidency only by consistently putting down the man, his cohorts, and all those who voted for him. So much so that when PCIJ’s Alecks Pabico sat down to write “Pinoy Parody Online” (http://www.pcij.org/imag/Online/pinoyparody.html) then, a veritable mine of websites that poked fun at President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada was there waiting for him.

A failed Edsa 3 and a junked impeachment complaint against Estrada’s successor later, most of those sites that Pabico featured—even writer Bob Ong’s website (http://www.bobongpinoy.com)—are dead links (pun intended). And one can’t help but wonder why.

It cannot be that there’s nothing to laugh about at this point, can it? If all things humorous are really based on grains of reality, then laughter should not, and need not, end. The funnies can only survive. For sure, we continue to receive and forward funny text messages and emails of jokes, editorial cartoons, and comic strips from the print media that delve into the state of this GMA-Garci nation. And yet, as we reel from one political punch after another, there are hardly any good punchlines echoing from cyberspace.

This is not to say that nothing political is being written online. There are tons of complaints, many bordering on anger. But instead of sites dedicated to parodying or satirizing the daily events that should concern us, what’s proliferating are weblogs or blogs—online diaries that can be on anything and everything, with no pretensions to objectivity or truth, but with illusions of an audience that will want to read through text upon text of opinion, rants, and raves.

THERE ARE, of course, bloggers who have used the form well, basically because they know what they want it to be about—politics, for example, as with Luis Teodoro (www.luisteodoro.com) and http:///www.piercingpens.tk/; or Pinoy pop culture, as with Paolo Manalo (in the old www.psychicpants.net and the spanking new http://www.livejournal.com/~paolomanalo). These sites also seem to have a clear sense of an audience, limited though it may be. Manalo’s blog(s) in particular, is funny, not just because of its chosen concern, but because it is lightly and cleverly written. But it rarely talks about politics.

In contrast, there are blogs that are overtly political, such as www.angasngkurimaw.blogspot.com and www.ourthoughtsarefree.blogspot.com. But perhaps because of the seriousness with which politics do need to be dealt with, there’s rarely anything to laugh about in these political blogs. Often the funny blogs are nonpolitical, if not altogether apolitical. There’s the http://akosipaeng.blogspot.com/ blog by a Pinoy who seems to always write about his world as if he’s seeing it for the first time; and there are those blogs like www.tabulas.com/~apester that has always been fun easy reading, but talks about nothing else other than food in its recent reincarnation.

It is these types of Pinoy blogs that are more personal diaries than political commentary, more this-is-my-life than this-is-the-state-of-the-nation, which have made up much of our Internet production in recent years. In this sense, while the blog has been celebrated as something that can function as an alternative source of information (the PCIJ has its own blog, for example), it has for the most part been used by Pinoy techies as a form through which they may write without limits, even when they really have nothing much to say. It has even become the rule rather than the exception to be apolitical and apathetic in the blogs we create.

A personal blog like www.professionalheckler.blogcity.com is a rare exception in that it ridicules the political state of the nation by poking fun at its personalities—akin to Erap’s time. More known for his spoofs of political speeches, blogger Loi Reyes Landicho calls the site a humor blog born of his agitation over recent political events, which to him make for “desperate times that require desperate measures.” Yet because of the form that it takes, what Landicho really offers the blog reader is mostly a hodgepodge of thoughts on various issues and events that may be political (why is there no outrage over the junked impeachment complaint?) but are not always so (why didn’t UP win in a recent pep squad competition?).

Still, Landicho can be funny, especially with her Top 10 lists a la David Letterman. Just on September 23, he posted the “Top 10 (Silliest) Reasons Why GMA Won’t Resign”:

  1. Unlike the Ejercitos, her family does not own a posh villa in Tanay, Rizal. In the event that she goes to jail, she would languish at Camp Capinpin, deprived of the same luxury being enjoyed by her predecessor.
  2. She would never allow some guy named Manuel ‘Noli’ de Castro, a graduate of some school known as UE to take over the presidency. She did not spend years at Assumption, Ateneo, UP, and Georgetown only to give way to a UE graduate! [Taas-kilay to the 9th degree…hmmpf!]
  3. Resigning would enrage her god whom she claims to be on her side and who makes everything possible for her. Remember her father’s dictum that has become her
    favorite cliché? “Do what issh right. Do your bessht and God will take care of the ressht.” Whatever.
  4. Luck is still on her side. [As I discussed here before, she is fated to become president.] Filipinos have more important things to do than join rallies. Despite unfavorable SWS, Pulse Asia, and Ibon Foundation surveys showing unprecedented public dissatisfaction and distrust, fact is, these are just figures. People would rather feed their families than burn effigies.
  5. GMA won’t step down unless Cong. Mike Arroyo wins an acting plum. His latest movie, “Sablay Na, Pasaway Pa” [which had its premiere in Biliran province
    sometime in June] has yet to be shown in Metro Manila theatres. Reports say bookers decline to release the cheap flick for obvious reasons.
  6. She will only relinquish her post as soon as the Philippines has overtaken Indonesia in the Asian corruption index ranking. We’re still at number 2. Becoming number 1 would be a feat indeed!
  7. The concept of delicadeza is alien to her.
  8. GMA simply cannot imagine herself behind bars while the First Gentleman goes shopping in Hong Kong with Vicky Toh.
  9. GMA dreams of a royal wedding for her only daughter Luli in Malacañang. Not in Lubao Church, not at the Manila Cathedral. The plan is to invite heads of state, as well as former US President and GMA classmate Bill Clinton. The event will eclipse the
    profligacy of the Imee Marcos-Tommy Manotoc wedding.
  10. And finally, GMA won’t resign because she’s not the president. She’s just an overstaying palace visitor.

STRANGELY ENOUGH, while this list is funny in its “silliness,” all a reader can muster is a smile and maybe a snort. It hardly provokes laughter, most probably because it hits too close to home, but also because there’s nothing funny in the way Landicho has reworked his material. In fact, most of these could be true (although it has to be pointed out Landicho may have meant the lavish Sarrat wedding of Irene Marcos and Greggy Araneta, and not that of Imee and Tommy Manotoc, who had eloped). It is obvious enough that GMA has no delicadeza, and it is possible that she has believed her own propaganda about God being on her side. Even more painful is the possibility that she is just lucky—people aren’t in the mood for rallies, or for information that will lead them there. Number 10 in particular isn’t funny because it reminds us that we may have handled Erap and Edsa 2 all wrong. The funniest thing about this list really is the way it makes fun of GMA’s speech defect (see item 3), which is similar to the way we made fun of Erap’s grammar.

So why doesn’t this work? If Landicho’s blog entry for September 6 entitled “The Award Goes To” is any indication, the answer may have more to do with ideology than creativity. This entry pokes fun at the personalities involved in the impeachment case against GMA, with the “Cry Me a River” award, for example, being given to Dinky Soliman for crying three times after she resigned as the social welfare secretary, while still looking “fashionable with the highlights in her hair …Jolinaesque indeed!” There were also the “Mag-diet Ka Muna” award given to Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano (for obvious reasons), and the “Not Enough Vitamins, Not Enough Life” award that went to Sorsogon Rep. Francis Escudero, who was unable to participate in the pro-impeachment walkout in Congress because, he said, he had fallen ill.

Here one begins to see why Landicho’s humor blog isn’t always funny. On the one hand, it has the temerity to make fun of the current state of the nation (when it wants to). On the other, it isn’t very clear where the blog stands in all these issues. It finds it fit to lampoon both GMA and her opposition, i.e. Soliman, Cayetano, Escudero et al., but it’s fuzzy about who—or what—it’s for. Strong statements are also made against what Landicho calls the “obsolete Left,” without taking into consideration all the steps this Left has taken toward compromise over and above the rallies that it leads.

Over at another humor blog, the sides are even less clearly drawn. Created by graphic artist/blogger Retzwerx, www.retzwerx.com has become known for its “poop-to-graphs,” in which thought and speech balloons are added to photographs of the president and her gang. But what or who is being made fun of? GMA? For having done what, exactly? What is the humor grounded on? That Retzwerx recently shifted topic from politics to reality TV’s “Pinoy Big Brother” is indicative not of the freedom allowed the blogger, but the lack of a clear political agenda that must drive any site set on inspiring change through laughter. It’s also something www.retzwerx.com shares with other similarly positioned Pinoy blogs: Although they have the guts to make fun of our politics, they are in the end only reactionary. They don’t have a clear stand on things, much less a sense of what to aspire for.

That’s one of the reasons why they’re not funny. One cannot make fun of the state of the nation without being serious or truthful about where one stands. In the same vein, one can’t just simply hate everyone—the government, the opposition, the Church, the Communists—without having a sense of the different colors they carry, and what those colors mean. One also can’t simply be angry. That doesn’t achieve much, as proven by Edsas 2 and 3.

AT LEAST in Erap’s time, our enemies were clear, our allies and alliances even clearer. We didn’t criticize both sides, and we reveled in having more and more people on our side—the Left, the Right, the religious in all its denominations. Now there are no enemies or any allies, and so we are not laughing. We seem stuck in a humorless political limbo.

Beyond the blogs, though, there seems to be hope, albeit a very small one. The site www.pldt.com is still going strong, and is in fact one of very few that fill the gap between the anti-Erap parody sites and the anti-GMA angry/reactionary blogs. While serious in its thrust of being anti-Arroyo at this point, particularly after the impeachment complaint was junked in Congress (see http://www.pldt.com/tipping%20point.htm), the site itself remains a force to reckon with. Not only is it still among the Top 50 Google sites in the news/satire directory, it also continues to rightly claim that it cares for the state of the nation, beyond Erap Estrada and Edsa 2. Just the same, however, there is a lot less irreverence now that there was in the Erap era—and a lot more anger directed at GMA.

Probably the only site that more than makes up for the dismal lack in political humor in light of current events is journalist Alan C. Robles’s online tabloid Hot Manila (www.hotmanila.com). Created by someone who has been exposing the absurdity of our politics for nearly two decades, Hot Manila is clear in its stand and has a good grasp of issues. It is also well-researched and well-thought out, using graphics and photographs alongside anti-GMA articles that make fun of her and the way she runs the country. It creates lists as well, but only to point out the parallelism between, say, having GMA as your lavandera (laundrywoman) and having her as President of the
Republic. (Among the top 10 reasons you wouldn’t want her as lavandera, it says, is that something other than your clothes.”)

Hot Manila skewers other political personalities, such as missing elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who stars in the article “Cooking with Garci” that contains, among others, Recipe 1: Malacanang Delight—take one ballot box, and that’s it! “The Arroyo Administration: Good and Bad,” meanwhile, is not only funny, it is also a reminder of how this government has wasted money, ignored public clamor for better governance, and helped big business in its continuing plunder of the economy.

Hot Manila has readers laughing while offering the enough information that can force them to make a stand. Unfortunately, it is only one in a sea of sites and blogs that offer little else beyond clever writing about nothing. It’s a situation that can only be detrimental to the country, and delightful only to the Arroyo administration.

Actually, this lack of online laughter is not only a measure of our stand on things, if any, but is also revealing of how the Net functions in this country. It is really a middle-class tool, one that we had used successfully against Erap because he wasn’t like us. A friend observes that it had been much easier to gather people, i.e. the middle class, against Erap because of the matapobre factor. We felt Erap wasn’t good enough for us, so we fought him at all levels, and particularly on the Internet, which is the educated’s turf. Now that we are faced with a president who is Erap’s opposite—a GMA who is well-educated and not (outwardly) crass—we have become uncertain on how to cast the Net.

We can’t quite see GMA as the enemy, since the enemy in this case is broadcaster-cum-vice president Noli de Castro. Although a college graduate, he is still perceived to be of the same educational and showbiz class as Erap. There is a matapobre factor at work once more, but this time it’s working for the incumbent because the pobre who does not quite measure up is de Castro.

With successful parodies and satires, laughter becomes the only defense against the truth presented. But what happens when those truths aren’t clear to us? Orunacceptable to us? Maybe that’s why blogs like professionalheckler’s fail at being funny. There are just no truths to pick on and laugh about so hard that it hurts.

Now we just hurt.

komentaryo

Finding Spaces

published in PCIJ i-Report, the investigative reporting quarterly, of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Issue no. 3, September 2005 http://www.pcij.org/i-report/3/filipino-youth.html

Too often the Filipino youth is viewed with the conventional eyes of our elders: we are the future of the nation, we are the agents of change. Government counts on us to help save the country, civil society exhorts us to be vigilant, the media remind us often enough that we are the hope of the nation. For the most part, however, they are disappointed. Especially when it’s convenient, we remain incomprehensible to our elders, and it’s easy to see why.

We are the high-tech generation, adept at computers and cell phones, but unable to communicate well without a keypad or a clicking mouse. Our relationships are characterized by, even built on, text messages and electronic mail, impersonal as these may be. We conspire with piracy and free internet downloads with gleefully open eyes, morality and ethics aside. We sit before our computers to find ourselves, if not in writing, then in creating websites, or in looking for jobs, friends, a community we might belong to. For many of us, our computers are our best friends, personal extensions where our work, our studies, our lives are conducted – if not created and re-created – as often as we find the need for it, which is quite often.

Our dependence on computers and cellphones is not only an indication of our aptitude for high-tech tasks and processes, it’s also an indication of our need for something we can hold on to, something that somehow defines us, and only us. We love being incomprehensible to our elders because of this technology, and we revel in it. Unfortunately, a lot of the time we also reveal our incapability at discernment, as we unthinkingly forward ill-informed text messages or emails, upload pictures on the internet without realizing the probability of its distribution, take videos with our phones and think nothing of it. We have a hard time deciding whether something is right or wrong, dangerous or not; worse, we are unable to discern just what role technology is playing in our lives, or why it has become so important to us.

This lack of clarity about the things that define us may be the only thing that we of this generation have in common. Born in the late 70s to early 80s to possibly activist or hippie parents, or to the straight conservative ones who stayed aloof of either extreme, ours is a generation that can’t seem to find a reason for its existence. At least our activist parents had the Left to believe in and the Marcos regime to struggle against; our hippie parents had the liberation of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll to live up; our conservative parents had the Church and the institution of family to hold onto. We, on the other hand, are faced with nothing but the dregs of these institutions, now all unstable, often unintelligible, usually in the process of compromise. It’s practically a non-space of resistance and liberation, with uncertain enemies and even less certain ideologies to back us up.

Not that all of us are having a difficult time finding the right spaces within which we may exist, if only to survive. Cheap labor and globalization have brought us the call centers where half our youth are employed, changing their biological clocks, messing up relationships, and creating demand for 24-hour McDonalds and Jollibees in the strangest street corners. A small percentage of the other half are self-employed, given rich parents who are only too happy to put up seed money and get their kids started on the capitalist course. Others with moneyed parents have the luxury of doing volunteer and NGO work, moved as they seem by a need to “give something back to the country” without necessarily seeing the big picture in which rich (probably their) families are the oppressors. Many are still part of the Philippine Left, confusing as that label has become, in all its denominations. At least those of us who are part of the different leftist movements have a better sense of what ails this country, even when we have to go from simple terms like poverty and corruption to the abstract levels and jargon of imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism, and fascism. But so many more of the youth have left, or are set to leave. Our prospective teachers, doctors, nurses are on a constant exodus to different parts of the world, with a small middle to upper class percentage leaving in disgust what they think is as a sinking boat. The bigger chunk of those who say goodbye though are of the lower classes, and they’re the ones who say that they shall return, when they’ve ensured their futures with the dollars they will earn.

But most, if not all of us, are at a loss. It’s not clear why we’re living our lives the way we do, doing the things that occupy us. There’s always a sense of uncertainty, not about the future, but about the present: what exactly are we doing? why is this what we do? Whereas the generation before us always had a sense of a future – with family, with career, with house and lot and what-have-you – we are always looking at a future that’s closer to the present, where we may finish our studies, find a job, write a book, or just simply see the month’s end and decide then what next.

This is not to say that we aren’t enjoying ourselves, uncertainties and all. Thanks to the fruits of our hippie and activist parents’ labors, we live in a time when there’s freedom in the music we hear, the books we read, the television shows and movies we watch. We are liberated from the strict rules of the Church and the institutions of family, school and employment. Freed from the stereotypes which our parents rebelled against, we think nothing of reconfiguring our roles to suit our needs. We are redefining relationships as often as we redefine ourselves – literally with vanity, or figuratively with spiritual or religious beliefs, and the next hip ideology. Homosexuality in all its dimensions has become our norm. Easily accessible organic herbs, designer drugs, and expensive alcohol are inanimate friends we can count on. And then there’s the sexual freedom we are heir to, which most of the time we abuse, misuse, and unthinkingly tie our lives around. Our liberation, handed down as it was, has become the freedom we can’t quite live up to. We wear what we want, we can be what we want, and do as we please, but this is not to say that we’re actually doing something.

For the most part, we are easily satisfied with ourselves, and that’s where the problem lies. We can do volunteer work for an NGO by day and party with abandon by night without feeling conflicted – we deserve it because we’re doing something for the country. We can sit at a café all day and talk about what ails our lives, our relationships, our country, and think that this is productive. We go to a token rally “for the truth to come out” and imagine ourselves socially relevant. We look at EDSA 2 and think: hah! that was my doing, without a sense of what it has truly brought this country, which isn’t much.

Four years ago, tasked to teach critical thinking and the essay to college sophomores eight to ten years my junior, I decided that the only way they could learn to think critically would be to show them where exactly they were coming from, and where they should speak from, given the state of the nation. I wanted to help them realize that in everything they said, did, or thought, they were speaking, doing, and thinking as Filipinos, whether they liked it or not. With that realization would come the responsibility not just to speak as Pinoys and Pinays, but to be Pinoys and Pinay in their analysis of everything from soap operas to foreign critical theories, from current events to the clothes they wear.

Of course given that we all, young and old alike, continue to be messed up about our identity as a people, I could only ground them in certain realities about our country that we manage, consistently, not to confront. Realities that we keep in check because we can, since we are not directly burdened. The most basic of these that needs to be acknowledged, I found, is the fact that we are an impoverished country, never mind that we’re driving the newest cars, or that we have the latest cellphones, or that we are not the poor. It does not mean that everybody else is as well-off – because not a whole lot are. Only upon realizing this can we raise the question: why are we poor? A question that can only be answered by history, hopefully a Constantino history, which tells of how we have been oppressed for centuries and by what, and how we have always fought back.
A sense of history is a good beginning, I believe, for those of us in this generation, students and teachers alike, seeking a reason for our existence at this point in time. Because we may be hi-tech and all, free to make life choices, and liberated in the way we dress, think, and do things, but in truth, we are misplaced and displaced by a lack of consciousness about where we truly come from in the context of the country we irrevocably belong to. When the poverty is acknowledged, our enemies become obvious. Ours is a long history of governance that has not had the interests of the majority of this country in mind, allowing globalization to eat us alive, allowing the elite to continue owning more and more of this country’s money and natural resources for themselves, allowing booty capitalism to prosper at the expense of the poor and hungry majority.And then there’s us, the educated middle class, some of whom choose to remain complacently uncertain about what we may do, and some of whom choose to take off, in search of happier spaces.

But the space we search for can only be here, in the one country we are born to and can truly call ours. Whatever we do, whether we’re leaving or staying, taking to the streets for the masses or going to the countryside and joining the armed struggle, whether we’re writing in English or living up the Filipino language, teaching in a university or answering complaints at a call center, we make our decisions in the context of the state of this nation, as we know it. This is all the space we need, and the space where we are most needed. We only need to know enough to see it.

Meanwhile, we wander among the spaces we create and wonder what it will take to knock some sense into our heads about the changes we have the power to effect. Quite possibly, we are a generation doomed to an endless process of searching – in denial about this country’s truths, not ready to give up our lives for the bigger battles, uncertain of what exactly it is we can do. Probably, we are a transition generation, finding and making spaces in the strangest of places – be it in the technology we so love or in the bars of Malate, be it in waging war or in observing the peace, in writing or in taking to the streets – living out our contradictory lifestyles and values, creating an open space for the time when we may all agree on what we stand for, and find it in ourselves to fight the real struggle for country vs. poverty, enemies and all.

Hopefully we see that this time can be now.

komentaryo

Killing Credibility on TV

For the longest time we have complained about media credibility, or the lack of it, with TV taking most of the blame – high profile, profitable, and in-our-faces as it is. A decade ago, it was about Mel Tiangco and Jay Sonza selling laundry soap while being ABS-CBN 2 news and current affairs show hosts; now, it isn’t as simple as just endorsing a product. Don’t get me wrong, doing an advertisement still puts the credibility of any news personality into question; but since news personalities shifted to careers in politics, and since so many of them have shown their partisan colors in various ways, and then have had the gall to return to television and speak as if we didn’t hear them, i.e., Dong Puno (lives!), even more has been going on than just having Mareng Winnie Monsod and her ilk sell laundry detergent.

There has been, for example, the exodus of news and current affairs personalities between the two giant networks in this country – an act that has become so normal, it’s gone unquestioned. But certain things are put to the fore when someone who spews the news and speaks of nation decides to move employers without a reason as big as that of Mel’s and Jay’s, where a case was brought before the courts. There’s the fact that in this country, the job of a news and current affairs personality isn’t really about doing good for the country as they like to remind us everyday, but about greener pastures and better opportunities for individual gains. We are also made to face the fact that this is all about the money, and that at this point, our news and current affairs people are no different from artistas whose services may be acquired by the highest bidder. All these overlook the fact of loyalty, and really, truly standing for the organization one works and speaks for. When a news personality can switch from calling herself a ka-puso to a ka-pamilya with the blink of an eye, then that news personality also loses all credibility, no ifs and buts about it. And let’s not even go in the direction of the argument that goes: “why are you picking on us? we’re no different from doctors or lawyers who switch hospitals or law firms!” Because that is just untrue. Media, particularly news and current affairs personalities who are in our faces everyday, are different. They mouth credibility and authority on issues. They carry with their titles a huge responsibility to a public that listens to them as if they speak the truth of the times.

Of course given the way things are, and because no one complains, things were meant to get worse. Welcome, lifestyle TV in local broadcasting!

Now, lifestyle isn’t bad per se. When ABS-CBN 2 came out with F, it was funky, fun and Pinay, and wasn’t wont to sell every fad, spa, or clothes store (as it does now). With it came pretty girls Daphne, Cher, and Angel, among whom only the latter was familiar as a model and actress; and all of whom found a niche in the fashion, style, nightlife segment of ABS-CBN’s news and current affairs division. And then they started having Cher do the Channel 23 news, and it was a sign of things to come. Having seen her partying, pigging out, dressing up, and talking about the clothes and make-up she likes on F – it was just difficult to believe her as a news anchor. I mean, there she was, looking credible, supposedly dishing out the news with objectivity, as scenes of her talking about her favorite color lipstick and how much it is, or the image of her in a tube top eating out and partying, kept replaying in my head. It was a wrong move all around, both for the news program and F (nomatter that she got that gig in the States). But as wrong moves go, this was the tip of the iceberg.

Recently, news and current affairs personalities have gone on to be “lifestyled” – and one only needs to think Korina Sanchez with Kris Aquino on Morning Girls to realize that it’s the worst move ever. Of course, I doubt it will ever be thought of by ABS-CBN 2 as such, but it must be seen for what it is beyond being a money-making venture: it destroyed Korina Sanchez’s credibility as a news and current affairs personality. She didn’t stand to gain anything by talking about her lipstick color, her hair, her clothes, and even her lovelife on nationwide television. If ABS-CBN thought Korina’s credibility would lend credence to a morning lifestyle cum talkshow, then it thought wrong, because it was Kris’ strong showbiz personality that actually killed Korina’s and the show’s credibility. In the end it was just some other talkshow that was wont to be irrelevant instead of relevant, credulous instead of credible, selling everything from the newest loveteams to the hottest spa or cosmetic procedures. If anyone stood to gain anything from Morning Girls, it was Mar Roxas – singing to Korina, and holding her hand too often in our mornings – and he did get that senate seat.

Let’s give Korina this though: she always showed a hint of discomfort, even shame, when conversations were steered towards make-up, clothes, and her personal life. That’s so much more than can be said of news and current affairs personalities who have actually decided that there is virtue in sharing their lives and styles beyond the news and their current affairs shows. Long ago, lines were clearly drawn between our artistas who stand to gain from putting up their lives for criticism, and news and current affairs personalities whose personal lives were irrelevant to their public persona. Now, none of that is clear anymore, as what we have are TV personalities, all of whom unthinkingly share too much of their personal lives with the public, making all of them mere feed for criticism, showbiz chismis, and sponsors. How else does one explain having news people being linked to boldstars and headlining showbiz talkshows? Why else do we have our current affairs hosts talking about botox injections, designer outfits, and Vicky Belo? And then our news people wonder why they’ve ceased to be credible, and are being disrespected.

Lessons may be learned from the likes of ABS-CBN 2 Correspondents Jim Libiran and Abner Mercado and I-witness reporters Jay Taruc and Maki Pulido whose lives we know nothing of but whose reports we look forward to; even Patrick Paez, “lifestyled” by marriage to F girl Daphne, has kept his private life to himself. Mike Enriquez and Mel Tiangco, do it just as well, hi-profile as they are (though the latter has fallen prey to showbiz magazine Yes! which featured her not-so-humble abode); and even young-ish Vicky Morales and Rhea Santos have kept their private lives, well, private – no televised lavish weddings in sight.

The truth is, news and current affairs personalities don’t stand to gain anything by showing us their mansions and pets, by talking to us about their hair and make-up rituals and favorite designer clothes and jewelry, botox and cosmetic procedures, by appearing (being photographed) in high-profile, ultra-expensive parties rubbing elbows with the elite of this country. In fact, we don’t need to know how our news people stay goodlooking, it’s enough that they don’t look terrible or obese (calling on Jessica Soho!). We don’t need to know how much they earn because we can just imagine. We don’t need information on their private lives because if anything, this ruins everything for us, particularly when we realize how rich they’ve become and what exactly they spend their money on while they spew concern, and purportedly speak, for the less fortunate in this country every chance they get.

Bottom line is, we only really want to have people who will ask the right questions and deliver the right news about the issues that are important to us as a nation. But then even that has become tricky. And the culprit is but one word: current.

Since “news and public affairs” became “news and current affairs” post-EDSA, what needs to be talked about has become obscured by what will bring in the ratings and therefore the cash, because it is the issue of the day. And so Dong Puno Live will as quickly talk about FHM and have boldstar Asia Agcaoili as guest, as Mareng Winnie and Pareng Oca Orbos will interview the boldie group D’Bodies over on Debate about their publicity stunt of dancing practically naked on the streets of Manila. And so time and again, we are forced to watch news and current affairs personalities asking inane questions of equally inane guests on irrelevant but “current” topics that range from cosmetic surgeries to the newest blind item, the latest fad diet to the “in” hang-out places, the most famous loveteams to Korean telenovela stars; they will even talk to Eddie Gil and feature him every chance they get. This, as the issues of debt and taxes, globalization and dead industries haunt us everyday. At this point, our news and current affairs shows practically all seem like Studio 23’s Wazzup Wazzup! And that just might be offensive to the latter.

Of course sometimes decisions are actually made about what is important and relevant – say the war in Mindanao, the economy, globalization, even Hacienda Luisita. But these discussions only go as far as asking who? what? when? where? instead of the more important why? what can we do? and what needs to be done? The most shallow of questions are asked, and the most obvious and safe conclusions are arrived at, and in ungrammatical English and Tagalog at that.

Now, that’s discussion for another essay altogether.

komentaryo

Boycott!

published in i magazine, The Investigative Reporting Magazine of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Vol. X, Nos.1-2, January-June 2004

No, this isn’t about apathy and a lack of interest in my country’s affairs. Nor is this simply about how the roster of candidates and their non-platforms have so stupefied me, I can’t bring myself to even think of voting. While the start of election season has seen me going through varying degrees of dismay, disgust, and distress, it’s not just these that have made me decide not to take part in the May elections. Truth is, long before GMA flip-flopped on her decision not to run, ever since EDSA Dos when the unified mob that stood up against Erap decided to go their separate ways – some on home, some with Cardinal Sin to pray, some with the Left to Mendiola – I have been finding many reasons not to vote, not least of which is the worsening poverty alongside a ballooning foreign debt, and the escalating presence of America in our land.

But the main reason goes beyond government and politics into the state of our minds. I’ve decided not to vote because over the last three years I’ve realized that we – the so-called “educated”, the middle to upper class “intelligent” and “enlightened” sector, the ones who read and write essays like this, including politicians – are actually all in over our heads, unable to make sense of our political and economic troubles, and incapable of working together towards real change. Worse, we actually think we are doing enough for the nation while blindly we accept and promote the Establishment’s propaganda that we need to celebrate our democracy with the vote even when the choices for president are all questionable.

How can we be at fault, you may ask. After all, we are the print and television personalities who fashion ourselves (or are fashioned) as “intellectuals” (sometimes academics) and who make it our business to be critical and to look out for the nation. We are the entrepreneurs who provide jobs, and the individuals who build NGOs to help neglected sectors. We stood up to the Marcos dictatorship and stopped tanks in 1986, then again marched to EDSA in 2000. We would like to think that we work and live for self AND nation. The question is, are our efforts getting the country anywhere near the goal of a happier prouder democracy?

Nowhere near, I would say, considering that even Inquirer’s Conrado de Quiros only goes as far as saying that we are responsible for the ignorant masa, but doesn’t tell us what he thinks we should do about it. Talk shows, like ANC’s Talkback with Tina Monzon Palma can only ask questions like “do political ads affect your vote?” as if the answer isn’t obvious. And on GMA 7, Debate’s Pareng Oca and Mareng Winnie are still stuck, still asking if a candidate’s personal life is important, as if there weren’t other, more important, questions begging to be asked.

The middle and upper classes happily go their separate shallow ways, content to do some good for some marginalized sector or other, but not to work on the flawed system to which it belongs. We’ve become so swift to label each other (communist! rejectionist! sell-out! even, fascist!) as though this were the be-all and end-all of any person, never mind that his or her proposed solution to a national problem may have merit. And for fear of being ourselves labelled, lest we lose our readers/fans/supporters – even present and future jobs – we have become very careful of what we say, and who or what we endorse, in public. It’s self-censorship at its best.

This is why we can celebrate democracy at the same time that we allow government to trample on it by disallowing rallies. We can moan about the how big the foreign debt is, but we can’t bring ourselves to insist that something be done about it. We say we’re pro-Pinoy yet we refuse to demand a pro-Pinoy platform of our presidential candidates. Worse, we do not seem to care, if we’ve noticed at all, that most of these candidates have charter change, specifically, changes in economic provisions, in their agenda, which should be freaking out serious pro-Pinoys!

Rightfully so, we are critical and wary of the wholistic solutions espoused by the extreme Left (communist rule) and the extreme Right (military rule), yet we in the middle have yet to come up with a coherent alternative, a political and economic strategy that would institute radical changes not only in the way we use and share the nation’s resources and do business among ourselves (Christian and Muslim alike), but also in the way we share our resources and do business with the rest of the world. And when someone actually comes up with something important, a must-read, like Walden Bello’s recent two-part essay “Thetragic consequences of doctrinaire economics” (posted on www.inq7.net, Dec. 24, 2003) on the Philippine economy and what we have been doing wrong compared to the rest of tiger Asia, no one prints it, no one reads it, no one takes it up for discussion.

Like Joel Rocamora, I thought for a while that maybe we could unite behind one candidate (my bet was Roco) and actually beat FPJ. But common sense and reality tell me otherwise. As de Quiros says, along with ABS-CBN and GMA 7 ads, voting is a personal thing. To vote is an act of conscience, an act of citizenship and freedom. Unfortunately for this country, this only really means voting for who we personally think will do something for us as individuals and our corresponding ideologies. It’s about self-centered concerns, and it means helping put in the highest position of the land someone who does not truly measure up.

A boycott may not solve anything, but would voting? The fact is, we need more than an election to save us from our troubles, and we need more than an “enlightened” electorate to get a good president. That we cannot even get ourselves a nationalist candidate is a reflection of how little we have come to demand of our leaders, and of ourselves. Too often, we have become like the politicians we complain about – we’ve started to believe our own propaganda and think we are doing enough.

In 1992 I campaigned for Salonga in the first ever election I was interested in. I was too young to vote, and he lost, but it was the only election I felt good about.

Having voted for Erap in ‘98, and participated in an EDSA that did nothing but put GMA in power, I refuse to put my country through the consequences of another of my mistakes. I owe it to my country not to vote. I will not settle for some “lesser evil”.

ComeMay 10 and enough registered voters boycott the exercise (which turn-out statistics would reflect) it would at least send the message to the President-elect that he or she has the vote and confidence of the inadequately informed and the politically naive only. *