News sense from nonsense
A LOT of interesting bits and pieces made news this week. Many of these are not major, nation-shaking stories but they definitely solicited varied reactions from people who were amused, amazed, or even outraged by the pettiness, crassness and ridiculousness of recent events.
Events such as the Ampatuan arraignment where ace lawyer Sigfreid Fortun tells the court that his client, Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. does not speak English and Tagalog.
Manila boy Fortun must fluently speak Maguindanawon or some other muslim dialect or else it would be a challenge for him to communicate with Andal using hand signs when Andal is handcuffed. Or is he?
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In a show of force (and sensitivity) the Optical Media Board raided pirated DVD stalls to confiscate DVDs featuring the Maguindanao massacre. The raid was a result of an appeal by the families of the massacre victims for the public to be more sensitive and give their murdered loved ones some sense of dignity by not buying a copy.
Anyone buying the DVD of the Maguindanao massacre from pirates must see a psychiatrist right away. Such twisted liking for DVD copies of blood and gore with real dead people in it, is making the sex video guys look sane.
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The Metro Manila Development Authority gets cautioned against repainting pink urinals green. Apparently, green is the official political color of Gibo Teodoro and they fear painting the new female urinals green might give Teodoro’s campaign a boost.
People who think this should give Filipinos more credit. A green pee pee chamber will not necessarily make us vote for Gibo automatically. Filipinos these days are color blind when it comes to politics and in many cases, they do vote more enterprisingly.
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Social networking had its share of Philippine politics this week as the Facebook war between presidentiables kicked off. It has been a race of presidential candidates with the most Facebook friends.
But politicians should not be too happy with their lead in the Facebook poll wars. By and large, the Filipino voters are offline. So as presidentiables gloat over their FB following the real voter is there in the slums or countryside, doing his mundane, life-sustaining tasks and could even care less about how Facebook is spelled.
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This hasn’t been a good time for many government websites after hackers attacked and vandalized their home pages.
On the DSWD homepage a green and glowing Grim Reaper stands guard while on the DOH site, alleged Indonesian hackers sexually molest a photo of Health Secretary Francisco Duque.
The hack attack only underlined how wanting our IT security is in the country and sparked fears over what these vandals are capable of doing.
And I do not believe the hackers are Indonesian. The hackers’ dark, targeted-specific humor is just too Filipino to be foreign.
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To get out of the poverty cycle, Filipinos should stop “thinking poor”, says MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando, in the context of personal growth, empowerment, and self-improvement hampered by poverty.
Thinking poor is a newer term for “victim mentality” which many Filipinos have. Thinking poor has stomped individual and national progress. It is time that as a people we see poverty not as a hindrance for us to invest on ourselves to make our lives better. Many of our poor have accepted their helplessness and rely on dole outs from the more “fortunate” rich, for subsistence hence they strive less.
Filipinos adhere to the basic religious teaching of humility which is stretched further into thinking poor. Church must explain what it means when it preaches “blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven”.
Because in the same way, God wants all of us to maximize his gift of talent and resources so we all live richer, more meaningful lives.
Besides, being rich is not such a bad thing and I’m sure Mr. Paranaque Delivery Man who just won the 111 million-peso Lotto jackpot would agree with me.
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And finally on the lighter side, of late we saw heroes rubbing more than just elbows with cinema’s most voluptuous vamps.
The hullabaloo over ring superman Pacquiao’s alleged involvement with starlet Krista Ranillo has not even cooled down and here comes push cart idol Efren Penaflorida making verbal passes at bombshell Angel Locsin in a couple of media sound bites.
Heroes are ordinary people who reach for the stars. And there go Efren and Manny taking that literally.
