AS SEEN ON TV
US Envoy ng Bayan
It’s been said that Ambassador Kristie Kenney is a tough act to follow. If any ambassador or diplomat would try to be as popular, he or she must have a widely-followed Facebook account, occassionally co-host on Wowowee, watch Filipino TV soaps and entertainment shows (with genuine interest) and be an eager fan of the stars just as many Filipinos are. He or she should also watch UAAP and root for his or her own cager—- with high schoolish, cheerleaderlike gusto.
Kenney’s successors and other ambassadors should not fear showing their fun side and enjoy the best the islands could offer them during their unpredictably short (or lengthy) tour of duty. There is more to our country than terrorists, thugs and ghastly slums you know.
Besides immersing in Filipinoness all over the country helps them know Filipinos better while taking a break from their rigid diplomatic regimen such as representing and protecting their country’s interests (and nationals) in foreign soils or promoting friendly relations with their transient host governments.
What probably endeared Ambassador Kenney to Filipinos is the fact that she is so candid, with her job and in many occasions, as with her persona. And she exhibited these likeable traits in her Facebook site which now has close to 5,000 friends, many of these Filipinos who are not even her friends in the strictest sense of the word.
She is not afraid to share her human side and even her real self on Facebook or in person. Zamboanga journalist David Santos even makes his own Kristie Kenney impressions (or impersonations) picked up from countless personal encounters with the US envoy in Basilan and Jolo—places deemed “no foreign man’s land” by western governments. These places are a walk in the park for Kenney.
Kenney did not conduct herself in the way a typical ambassador of any foreign country would and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Sometimes, diplomats are just so wrapped up in unnatural seriousness, cordon sanitaire and many times with slight conceit that seeing an all-smiles and ultra amiable Kenney is a refreshing ambassadorial sight.
Envoys are almost (always) stiff when they conduct themselves in public but we’ve seen none of that from Kenney who danced (like no one’s watching) in TV variety shows, cheered for Chris Yap in countless Blue Eagles UAAP games, and posted inanities on Facebook from shopping plans to spring cleaning... from worrying over her ailing mother who needs caring back in home in the US to her thanksgiving dinner... or that crimson sunset giving Manila bay a silent kiss as seen from her Roxas Boulevard office window which is just too beautiful to keep to herself.
Those countless Facebook posts and photos of Kenney in many parts of the archipelago even makes her a perfect tourism ambassador as she demonstrates to the west how safe (and equally pleasurable) travel in the country can be—- contradicting stale international travel advisories that achieved nothing but make the Philippines appear slightly safer than the streets of Baghdad.
And it’s not to say that her entire tour of duty was all rest and recreation. In between tours (and Facebook status updates) she would check (physically) on her country’s humanitarian missions particularly in places where even angels fear to thread such as parts of security-disabled Mindanao.
In Jolo, she would read story books with school children, or swim with the whale sharks in Donsol Sorsogon to promote caring for the environment.
During the country’s darkest and underwater times last year, she actively participated in relief efforts and handed out the goods herself to the flood victims. A rolled up sleeved ambassador, Kenney showed Filipinos a side of America that’s mostly obscured by its rigid imperial reputation. She reached out to the people in this country by showing them an America that’s more free-spirited, friendly and less political.
As Kenney mostly kept to her adopted Filipino ways during her tour of duty, she has made genuine friends in the Philippines that if the US ambassadorship was an elective position? She’d most likely clinch a reelection (by a landslide, Facebook vote). And no fraud involved.
In an exit interview with Zamboanga media she thanked the Filipinos for their friendship and asked for their full support for her successor, Harry Thomas Jr.
And oh, she did profess her undying love for mangoes and lumpia too.
