CRITIC'S CRITIC
Mentong Laurel
4/11-17/2011
One of my purposes in writing this regular Critics’ Critic series is to offer readers of OpinYon a select summary of opinions of commentators from tri-media that I think are worthy of special attention.
But with over 50 op-ed columns and articles everyday from at least seven major newspapers and at least five major AM news and talk shows, these would be impossible to follow unless you are a pundit of pundits like me.
As such, this is my service, as well as OpinYon’s, to you all. This week we review the reproductive health (RH), drug mules, and Jan-jan issues, as tackled in choice columns of different newspapers:
“Damasos and ovaries” by Elizabeth Angsioco in the Manila Standard Today got me really interested to read her take on the RH issue with this striking title. Part I of her two-part series came out in the paper’s April 2 to 3 editions. Had the title just stated an obvious proor anti-RH position, I wouldn’t have taken another look at it since there is now a diarrhea of chatter on the debate; but by bringing up our history’s Padre Damasos, juxtaposed with a most sensitive organ in the female anatomy, Angsioco perfectly summed up the clash between the pontificating conservatives and the female gender’s right to their own.
Here’s a sampling:
“Damaso lives. He mingles with us exacting obedience even on personal matters, women’s ovaries included… Controversies surrounding the reproductive health bill are significant because of present-day Damasos who vigorously oppose its passage… Recent developments like the anti-RH ordinances approved by Barangay Ayala Alabang (BAA) and the seven barangays in Balanga, Bataan, the ongoing black propaganda against the RH bill particularly using the pulpit, all these show us how modern-day Damasos and their allies work… The BAA documents are explosive… no public hearing was called to discuss the ordinance. All of the kagawads our leaders spoke with said that they were just asked to sign the ordinance…The plot thickens. There will be more next week.” Search for “Elizabeth Angsioco, Damasos and Ovaries” on the Internet to read more on this.
On Bended Knees
The past week saw the drama of the three Filipino drug mules’ execution drummed up by mainstream media. The Inquirer bannered it on March 30 with “Nation on bended knees.”I was really aghast. It’s a demeaning headline for a nation of 90 million normal, righteous Filipinos whom I don’t believe would be that cross-eyed.
When I tuned in to the major radio stations that morning, all of them were on it too, as were the TV networks with tearjerking interviews of the condemned convicts’ families. I thought everyone else had gone insane until I came across Ellen Tordesillas’ column in Malaya’s April 1 edition:
“TV networks realize that their attempt to sensationalize the deaths of the three to boost their ratings failed. In my prayers for the families… as they try to cope with the loss of their loved ones, I also… hope the TV networks learn… and not to again attempt to replicate a Flor Contemplacion… a media event in 1995 that violated all rules of journalism, as what ABS-CBN tried to do…
In the man-on-the street survey of TV Patrol (on) whether the three deserved to be executed, Noli de Castro couldn’t hide his disappointment that 80 percent answered in the affirmative… (When asked) if they thought that the government had done enough…
45 percent said ‘No’ and 55 percent said ‘Yes.’ De Castro said, ‘Halos tie lang.’ He didn’t stop there. He said… ‘May gusto kasing pumapel…’ Yes, there’s one who is trying to exploit the situation: De Castro and his ilk.” Bravo, Ellen.
Enough with Hypocrisy
A similar view was expressed by Conrado de Quiros in the Inquirer: “One text message sender said enough with the hypocrisy. The Filipinos who were executed in China were selfconfessed drug couriers. Even their families admitted so… It is one thing to be dramatic, it is another to be melodramatic… itis another to have a sense of proportion…The day the networks see those differences is the day we are spared grief…”
The spoiler in the piece was his impulse draw a parallel with the emotional Marcos burial issue: “…only a couple of weeks ago, the congressmen voted overwhelmingly to bury Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani… Gone was the fact that Marcos had ruled the country illegitimately, pitilessly and viciously… stealing, enough of the murder, torture and disappearances.” But then, 50 percent of Filipinos remember better things of Marcos and worse of the Yellows.
Child Abuse or Not…
The week also saw the imbroglio over an alleged exploitation of a six-year-old boy supposedly compelled to do a sexy macho dance in Willie Revillame’s primetime program. I honestly don’t watch Revillame so I don’t know how bad that episode went.
I also can’t ascertain as of yet why the child reportedly cried as the audience was said to have laughed like mad.
Child abuse or not, is this really a priority issue for the Commission on Human Rights when teachers and their students are kidnapped (and later freed) in Agusan del Sur and 11 are dead again in Maguindanao, in a clash between MILF elements and the Mangudadatu clan? That’s what I wondered when I read Emil Jurado’s column in Manila Standard Today:
Lesson on Mendicancy
“The move of both the Commission on Human Rights and the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board to investigate Manny Pangilinan’s TV5 and Willie Revillame for
that unfortunate episode of a six-year-old boy, in tears, doing a sexy dance should be pursued to their logical ends…
It’s a show people go for since all they have to do is to make themselves look like fools and presto, Willie pulls out wads of pesos from his hip pocket as a give-away. It’s a lesson on mendicancy… Revillame crossed the line. I have supported TV 5 and Revillame in the long fight against the Lopez-owned ABSCBN. But Willie has gone too far this time. Let the axe fall where it should.”
But will it?
TV5 of Manny Pangilinan is no different from the Lopezes’ ABS-CBN.
Laissez-faire capitalism’s media interest is solely for profit and diverting the people’s mind from the exploitative character of the system.
‘Liars’ Next
I have run out of space for the other two writers and topics of real importance: John Mangun of the of Business Mirror pushing for the removal of protectionist constitutional provisions and Ken Fuller’s splendid Tribune commentary (entitled “Liars”) on Washington and London’s “arming the Libyan opposition.”
Those will be for our next issue.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “NFA Privatization: Grains of Wrath;” visit http:// newkatipunero.blogspot.com and watch or listen to our select radio and GNN shows)
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ReplyDeleteI am even more pleasantly surprised to see that the Philippines seems more “free market” oriented than some developed economies (e.g. Japan, Australia, France) or to some EM contemporaries (e.g. Indonesia).
Although operating from ground zero, I’d say that the free market sentiment may not be significantly accurate: many (even in the business community or in the elite academe or the media) don’t seem to understand or even resists the notion of free markets at all!
Some local 'free trade' experts see free markets more of a convenience or perhaps even a fad.
But there’s got to be some truth to this. that’s because probably the benefits of free trade (seen via globalization)—broader array of choices, cheaper and more affordable and quality and technologically enhanced products and services plus social mobility (tourism, migration) and more job or earning opportunities from external exposures (trade and remittances)—may have sublimely filtered to the sensibilities of the domestic populace.
Simply said, much of the world, including the Philippines, has been benefiting from increasing exposure to market economies and globalization.
And this has remarkably helped improved free market sentiments, mostly seen on the emerging markets which has been major beneficiaries of trade liberalization.
I am reminded of one of the champions of capitalism and free trade, the great Milton Friedman, in this historic interview about greed who said, (bold highlights mine)
Well first of all tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It’s only the other fella that’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The greatest achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty that you are talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kind of societies that depart from that.
Date April 27, 2009
ReplyDeleteAuthor: John Mangun
BUSINESS MIRROR
“Outside The Box”
Title: “For the Philippines or For the West?”
“I will say this as plainly as I can: there is a determined effort by the West to downplay and diminish any positive economic aspects of countries like the Philippines.
What is happening is not simply propaganda. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is not simply the Western media being biased in their assessments of countries like the Philippines. These efforts to undermine nations like the Philippines may be subtle and covert, but it is nonetheless, an all-out economic war.
The larger and predominately Western nations and economies have spent nearly 50 years subjecting the “Third World” to economic neo-colonialism. From one-sided trade practices to encouraging improper and unnecessary lending to these countries through the International Monetary Fund, counties like the Philippines have been held in control.
Western banks have made billions of dollars by lending to the ‘under-developed’ countries. And everything has been done to keep these nations less-developed to force them to rely on borrowing from the Western banks. Economic growth has been stifled at all costs to insure that investment capital would not flow out of the West.
They cannot afford to see any capital flight to countries like the Philippines. And they will do everything in their power to stop it.
The USA in particular, needs every foreign dollar they can find to be invested in their economy. Every dollar that flows to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, or any place else is one less dollar to save the USA and Western European economies.
You can make 430 times more interest in the Philippines. Where is any sensible person going to put their money? Outside the USA and Western Europe.
But they, the West, cannot let that happen. So they easily manipulate the price of the US dollar to scare investors into thinking that they only place for their money is in the ‘safe haven’ of the US.
At every opportunity, the ‘experts’ highlight government budget deficits in countries like the Philippines, prompting fears of currency devaluation without ever noting facts like that Western government deficits are a far greater percentage of GDP than many countries like the Philippines.
They spread false information about bank and tax laws to strike fear that by investing in countries like the Philippines, people may be violating home-country financial regulations.
The ‘experts’ at the global financial institutions are hard at work looking for negatives about the Philippines. Tourism is supposed to be hurt this year, damaging the economy. Except year-to-date arrivals are up 10 percent over 2008. Remittances are expected by the foreign experts to fall disastrously. Except in January, they grew larger over 2008 and February’s numbers were even better.
You personally have a choice. You can easily join the economic war against the Philippines. Help the West and their economies by not expanding your local business. Buy dollars instead of pesos. Do not even consider investing in the Philippine stock market. Buy foreign products and not domestic.
Or you can make a decision that you stand on the side of the Philippines and do exactly the opposite.
The Philippines is alone and does not have any friends or allies in the Western governments and financial institutions. Our wealth gain is their wealth loss. That is the fact of this economic war and every member of this Filipino economy is a participant in that war, realize it or not. The only question is; are you economically fighting for the Philippines or against this country?"