Alarm bell
Alarm bell
Updated 11:43pm (Mla time) Sept 29, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the September 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE THING was a subject of much (heated) discussion in the Internet some years ago, and for some reason has gotten a new lease on life of late. That is the apparent anti-Filipino remarks of Art Bell, an American talk-show host. Filipinos and Americans alike were up in arms over his commentaries some years ago and tried to get him fired from his radio station. They are so as well today, to go by the irate expostulations I've gotten in my e-mail.
There's only one problem here: Art Bell never said those things. His supposed remarks were a hoax, as the Inquirer found out a couple of years ago. And Bell, a completely respectable talk-show host, has been protesting it since it came out on the Internet. The hoax has him saying:
"In the past few decades, Filipinos have begun to infest the United States like some sort of disease.... Nothing respectable has ever been created by the Filipino people.... Young Filipino men in America... have an enormously perverted affection for Japanese cars... In their minds, they somehow believe they are Asian...." [In fact], in Japan, Filipinos are heavily discriminated against. The only Filipinos that can live successfully in Japan are the prostitutes.... Nothing in Filipino Culture can be seen as Asian. They have no architectural, artistic, or cultural influence, which is in any way, Asian. Thinking of the great countries in Asia such as Japan, Korea, and China there is no way you can possibly connect the Philippine Islands."
There's a lot more, but you get the drift. What can I say? The Web crawls with spiders. It is as much home to nasty pranksters as to software sharers. While at this, to this day I keep getting e-mail that has apparently bounced back to me. "Apparently" because I never sent those e-mails to begin with. Clearly, the characters who kept sending people e-mails purportedly from me during the height of the Iraq War (someone wrote me to say he got pornographic material; I asked him to send it "back" but unhappily got no answer) are still alive and crawling in the woodwork.
What has given the Art Bell hoax a life of its own however is that it is perfectly believable. It is perfectly believable that an American radio host would say it. Howard Stern comes to mind. And only recently Jay Leno had some funny things to say about the size of the Filipino contingent in Iraq and its capacity to win the 100-meter dash. Their remarks, of course, are not of the order of wholesale Filipino-bashing, but it is not inconceivable that someone should up the ante.
What makes the hoax credible moreover is that there is a grain of truth in it. It's a trick mirror, but a trick mirror does reflect something even if it presents it in grotesque form. Whoever put the words in Bell's mouth knew a thing or two about Filipinos.
True enough, compared to the other Asian countries, we seem to be utterly without accomplishment. More so now than ever. We have no culture comparable to that of any of the East Asian countries, or indeed even the Southeast Asian ones. Thailand has every reason to draw in the tourists (it has 10 times more than we do) and that isn't only because of the pleasures of the flesh it offers (we supply it equally abundantly).
Of course, we can always argue that the United States, quite apart from Spain and Japan, had a great deal to do with creating the cultural wasteland. I remember saying exactly that some months ago when US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone lamented the culture of corruption that was ravaging these islands. Pray, what is colonialism but an object -- or abject -- lesson in it? Close to four centuries of colonial rule does take its toll on a people.
But it is cold comfort. True enough, too, it's not just that we have no identity to be proud of, unlike other Asians, it's that we have no identity, period. We do tend to poach on other people's identities in lieu of brandishing our own. The only thing wrong about the hoax in fact is that it accuses Filipinos of usurping an Asian identity. That is not so at all. Filipinos do not like to usurp an Asian identity, they like to usurp a Western identity. Or more specifically an American identity. That is true not just with Filipinos in America but with Filipinos in the Philippines. The alienation of the Filipino does not begin in America, it begins right at home.
The colonial label, "little brown brother," has become the post-colonial label, American citizen, or green card holder. That is the great Filipino dream, and that is the great Filipino tragedy.
Nothing has driven that home to me more than something a Filipino advertiser in America once told me. During an advertising conference, he said, he was astonished to see that American advertisers had special ads for various ethnic communities -- Mexicans, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. but none for Filipinos. He learned soon enough why. Filipinos were considered a subset of the American market, they did not need a different pitch. A reasonable assumption, to go by the very ads we have right here. Filipinos are not assimilated, they are subsumed-and the subsumption begins right at home.
And true enough, finally, we have been tumbling into the world like a flood, though the United States remains the preferred country of exile, if not infesting it like a virus. That, along with leaving behind a country that is going nowhere and having a reputation for seizing other people's identities, a la "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," opens us up to all sorts of parodies, nasty remarks, and well, hoaxes like this.
I am glad this hoax persists, even if we have to remove Bell from its shadow once and for all. It forces us to look at ourselves. We truly are becoming a people with no history, no identity, and the way things are, no home.
Someone should be ringing that Alarm Bell.
Updated 11:43pm (Mla time) Sept 29, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the September 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE THING was a subject of much (heated) discussion in the Internet some years ago, and for some reason has gotten a new lease on life of late. That is the apparent anti-Filipino remarks of Art Bell, an American talk-show host. Filipinos and Americans alike were up in arms over his commentaries some years ago and tried to get him fired from his radio station. They are so as well today, to go by the irate expostulations I've gotten in my e-mail.
There's only one problem here: Art Bell never said those things. His supposed remarks were a hoax, as the Inquirer found out a couple of years ago. And Bell, a completely respectable talk-show host, has been protesting it since it came out on the Internet. The hoax has him saying:
"In the past few decades, Filipinos have begun to infest the United States like some sort of disease.... Nothing respectable has ever been created by the Filipino people.... Young Filipino men in America... have an enormously perverted affection for Japanese cars... In their minds, they somehow believe they are Asian...." [In fact], in Japan, Filipinos are heavily discriminated against. The only Filipinos that can live successfully in Japan are the prostitutes.... Nothing in Filipino Culture can be seen as Asian. They have no architectural, artistic, or cultural influence, which is in any way, Asian. Thinking of the great countries in Asia such as Japan, Korea, and China there is no way you can possibly connect the Philippine Islands."
There's a lot more, but you get the drift. What can I say? The Web crawls with spiders. It is as much home to nasty pranksters as to software sharers. While at this, to this day I keep getting e-mail that has apparently bounced back to me. "Apparently" because I never sent those e-mails to begin with. Clearly, the characters who kept sending people e-mails purportedly from me during the height of the Iraq War (someone wrote me to say he got pornographic material; I asked him to send it "back" but unhappily got no answer) are still alive and crawling in the woodwork.
What has given the Art Bell hoax a life of its own however is that it is perfectly believable. It is perfectly believable that an American radio host would say it. Howard Stern comes to mind. And only recently Jay Leno had some funny things to say about the size of the Filipino contingent in Iraq and its capacity to win the 100-meter dash. Their remarks, of course, are not of the order of wholesale Filipino-bashing, but it is not inconceivable that someone should up the ante.
What makes the hoax credible moreover is that there is a grain of truth in it. It's a trick mirror, but a trick mirror does reflect something even if it presents it in grotesque form. Whoever put the words in Bell's mouth knew a thing or two about Filipinos.
True enough, compared to the other Asian countries, we seem to be utterly without accomplishment. More so now than ever. We have no culture comparable to that of any of the East Asian countries, or indeed even the Southeast Asian ones. Thailand has every reason to draw in the tourists (it has 10 times more than we do) and that isn't only because of the pleasures of the flesh it offers (we supply it equally abundantly).
Of course, we can always argue that the United States, quite apart from Spain and Japan, had a great deal to do with creating the cultural wasteland. I remember saying exactly that some months ago when US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone lamented the culture of corruption that was ravaging these islands. Pray, what is colonialism but an object -- or abject -- lesson in it? Close to four centuries of colonial rule does take its toll on a people.
But it is cold comfort. True enough, too, it's not just that we have no identity to be proud of, unlike other Asians, it's that we have no identity, period. We do tend to poach on other people's identities in lieu of brandishing our own. The only thing wrong about the hoax in fact is that it accuses Filipinos of usurping an Asian identity. That is not so at all. Filipinos do not like to usurp an Asian identity, they like to usurp a Western identity. Or more specifically an American identity. That is true not just with Filipinos in America but with Filipinos in the Philippines. The alienation of the Filipino does not begin in America, it begins right at home.
The colonial label, "little brown brother," has become the post-colonial label, American citizen, or green card holder. That is the great Filipino dream, and that is the great Filipino tragedy.
Nothing has driven that home to me more than something a Filipino advertiser in America once told me. During an advertising conference, he said, he was astonished to see that American advertisers had special ads for various ethnic communities -- Mexicans, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. but none for Filipinos. He learned soon enough why. Filipinos were considered a subset of the American market, they did not need a different pitch. A reasonable assumption, to go by the very ads we have right here. Filipinos are not assimilated, they are subsumed-and the subsumption begins right at home.
And true enough, finally, we have been tumbling into the world like a flood, though the United States remains the preferred country of exile, if not infesting it like a virus. That, along with leaving behind a country that is going nowhere and having a reputation for seizing other people's identities, a la "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," opens us up to all sorts of parodies, nasty remarks, and well, hoaxes like this.
I am glad this hoax persists, even if we have to remove Bell from its shadow once and for all. It forces us to look at ourselves. We truly are becoming a people with no history, no identity, and the way things are, no home.
Someone should be ringing that Alarm Bell.
posted by Dante at 7:45 PM
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