Champion

Champion


Posted 00:15am (Mla time) Mar 23, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the March 23, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


FIRST off, it's a lesson for local TV. Next time it covers a blockbuster sports event, it has to do it in real time. The days when networks can be a little avaricious and air those things "on a slightly delayed basis" to crowd in commercials are over. Well before the Pacquiao-Morales fight was shown on Solar TV, the result was already known and talked about in Metro Manila.

I remember that in the 1970s and 1980s, only people in media knew the result in advance. The messengers in the office where I worked were among those who milled around the teletype, waiting for word about the result of a fight, with the intention of rushing off to some part of Greater Manila, as it was called then, and betting on a sure thing. Without fear of being caught cheating and roughed up.

Today, there are all sorts of media reporting events instantaneously. Radio was already broadcasting the result of the Pacquiao-Morales fight shortly after it started on TV. I had resolved to resist the temptation to look at the Internet and at my cell phone messages, the latter being where in the past I learned, to my chagrin, the ending of a fight just as it was beginning on TV, but I let one slip away. I saw a friend's name on my cell just past noon, and imagining he might have an urgent thing to say, read his message. Only to learn of Pacquiao's defeat. I felt defeated.

I was, of course, one of those who mourned his loss. Though while at that, I did not greatly envy him his monumental burdens from the start. It wasn't just his reputation and title at stake in that fight, it was the life and happiness of his country. The country had been pummeled by adversity, natural and woman-made, and needed a win badly to feel good about itself, or indeed have something to cheer about. Well, only Mike Arroyo and a slew of congressmen were there to inspire him. Better if they had sent Ynez Veneracion instead.

While at that, someone sent me this text message after the fight, jokingly quoting President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: "My countrymen, the need to impose new taxes has now become more urgent. Naubos ang CDF ng ating mga congressmen sa pustahan sa Las Vegas [Our congressmen lost their CDF (Countryside Development Fund -- pork barrel) betting in Las Vegas]. We may now have to borrow from Mexico." That is the kind of joke that could make you die laughing.

Like most Filipinos, I expected a dazzling victory and dancing in the streets. My cable TV turned snowy early last week, a development I didn't particularly greatly mind (I use TV pretty much to watch DVD), until I remembered that Pacquaio was fighting last Sunday. I frantically called up SkyCable Friday, and they assured me they'd fix it in 24-48 hours. Friday came and went, and I called them again. The repairmen came Saturday afternoon and were friendly enough. They laughed when I told them the reason why I badly needed the cable fixed, and one said he himself wasn't watching the fight, he was afraid Pacquiao might lose. I told him not to worry: if Pacquiao's showing last December were any indication, he would flatten out Morales in no time. Morales had lost to Barrera, and Barrera had lost to Pacquiao, in a complete rout. Not to worry, I repeated, Pacquiao would take out Morales.

Alas, as it turned out, boxing is not Algebra. In Algebra, if A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C. In boxing, C can always be greater than A. Morales certainly was so, dominating Pacquiao pretty much the way Pacquiao dominated Barrera. Much would be made of the fact that Pacquiao suffered a cut midway into the fight, but he was already losing the fight to the more savvy Morales even then. The same way he did -- though it was ruled a draw -- to Marquez last year, Marquez clawing out of three knockdowns in the first round and reclaiming the rest of the fight with superior skills.

I still think Pacquiao could have made up, and will make up in future, for rawness with quickness and power. But he has to regain something he has lost tremendously in a couple of years, and that is the fire in his eyes. That was the one thing I saw in his fight with Barrera, and even with Marquez in the first few rounds, which wasn't there with Morales. A fire born of hunger, a fire sparked by desire, a fire fanned by an obsession to excel. It just wasn't there last Sunday, even before a head butt virtually closed his right eye.

I'm glad at least that public officials have commiserated with him, including President Arroyo, who said, "I praise Manny Pacquiao's courage, ability, and fighting spirit." Though I suspect the prepared speech for when he won was far more effusive. If I recall, the President preempted the showing of the post-fight analysis of the Pacquiao-Barrera fight by going on air to congratulate Pacquiao. But like I said, I'm glad at least for the commiseration, including Dick Gordon's "(This will) make (Pacquiao) a better fighter and a better champion in the future. There's nothing to be ashamed of." It has nothing to do with Joseph Estrada's or Robin Padilla's idea of "walang iwanan" [no one leaves anyone behind], it's just basic decency.

A fighter's mettle is not shown in victory, it is shown in defeat. Or indeed, as Muhammad Ali proved, it isn't shown entirely, or even largely, in the ring. It is shown outside of it, in life. Ali's greatest defeat wasn't in the ring and wasn't caused by any of his pugilistic archenemies. It was caused by the US government, which stripped him of his title and his license to fight because he refused the draft. As it turned out, that was his greatest victory, too. I don't know that Pacquiao will ever have occasion to fight a fight like that. I do know that the way he comports himself after this defeat will decide whether he will go the path of Muhammad Ali or Rolando Navarette.

Character. In the end, that's the stuff that makes for true champions.

God's will

God's will


Posted 11:51pm (Mla time) Mar 21, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the March 22, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


BISHOP Oscar Cruz had some interesting things to say about the Department of Health's nationwide campaign for responsible parenthood a couple of months ago. "First," he said, "there was the 'Ligtas-Tigdas.' Now there is the 'Ligtas-Buntis 2005.' What is supposed to be sacred, such as human sexuality, has now become a dangerous liability. What is to be treated with dignity, such as human pregnancy, is now considered a dirty disease."

He went on: "When shall this country treat its citizens with respect? When will it learn to make its people its precious asset? When will it truly acknowledge that it is its population, such as the OFWs, that keep it somehow economically afloat?"

Comes now Bishop Jesus Dosado proposing something drastic, which is that the people pushing for or supporting government's "anti-life policies" be barred from taking Holy Communion, or themselves voluntarily refrain from doing so. They are not worthy to receive Christ, he says. Artificial birth control methods go against the will of God.

Well, Cruz has a right to be a little peeved that the DOH should put "buntis" [pregnancy] on the same plane as "tigdas" [measles]. Which should be a lesson in taking semantics as seriously as health: Both are a matter of life and death. The day you suggest that pregnancy has the same characteristics as chicken pox is the day you invite the wrath of God, or his self-professed representatives on earth, down on your cause. I know that Gabriel Garcia Marquez once compared the symptoms of love to those of cholera (in "Love in the Time of Cholera"): stomachache, dizziness, vomiting. But that is love, or at least the situation when one is waiting for word about whether one's love is requited or not. Not pregnancy.

A better word would have been "iwas," or avoid, rather than "ligtas," or cure, though even "iwas" -- particularly with its association with "iwas-pusoy" -- is bound to raise the hackles of those who think pregnancy is a consummation devoutly to be wished by every woman at every turn (of the screw). Those who think so being the bishops and priests, who, not quite incidentally, are all men. I wonder how women priests, or women bishops, would feel about this when, or if, the day comes, though to the current Church the concept of women priests probably comes more directly from the devil's mind than contraception. Fortunately for priests, who have been known to get some of their female parishioners pregnant, they personally do not have to bear the fruits of their labor for nine months, and face the diatribe of gossipy neighbors. Their objects of love, or lust, do. If they themselves did, they might develop a new appreciation for the words "ligtas" and "iwas." Or at least understand why, though truly pregnancy is not a malignancy, it is a consummation often devoutly to be avoided, or prevented.

Just as well, human sexuality may be sacred, but that doesn't mean the couple -- and I can hear cries of "Heretic!" coming my way with the added qualification, man-and-woman or otherwise -- should be gritting their teeth and whispering fervently, "In aid of heaven," while in the throes of its more intense expressions. Sacred is not opposed to pleasurable, or even fun. Unfortunately, most people do not have the iron discipline of some of us and can pull the thing out before it inundates the womb with its cascading glory. Concupiscent youth certainly does not, even the married variety, which, as another Church injunction assures, is the only context in which youth can release its concupiscence.

I cannot imagine a more anti-human, or indeed anti-life, view of sex than that it is burden to be endured to add to the number of carbon units in this planet. It is certainly anti-women, turning them into sows or cows to increase the stock, or as that local word so graphically puts it, "palahian." I've heard that word often used in conjunction with women with big hips. Big hips equals easy pregnancies, equals a bigger tribe, or race ("lahi").

As to denying supporters of birth control Holy Communion, that is guaranteed only to plunge the number of communicants to record lows, if not the number of Catholics, or Christians, themselves in this country. If that proposal were applied to Spain, for example, home of the Opus Dei and the friars who brought us to this pass, there will be very few left to queue up to Holy Communion, or indeed to Mass itself. Certainly, there will be no public official to do so, government having legalized divorce in 1981 and abortion in 1985. Today, sex-change surgery in that country falls under the national health plan.

I agree with Cruz that government does not treat its citizens with respect, it does not see its people as its most precious resource, it does not appreciate what its overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in particular are doing to keep the country afloat. I disagree that that is shown by government's family planning program. In fact, it is shown by everything except government's family planning program. Government's lack of respect for its citizens and appreciation for the OFWs is shown first and foremost by the recklessness with which it advertises its leading role in the rape of Iraq. That war has been deemed by no less than the Pope itself as immoral and it has been shown by Robert Tarongoy as idiotic in the extreme, shoving as it does our OFWs in the path of harm. Why isn't the local Church fulminating against it?

In the end, it isn't just government that's showing contempt for the people. The Church is, too. You do not show respect for human beings by equating dignity with fertility, the divine spark with vulgar number. In any case, the growing litter the women of this country will be towing behind them isn't likely to land in Church, it is only likely to land in jail.

It's hard to see how that can be God's will.

Dying things

Dying things


Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Mar 20, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


IT'S reason to be deeply bothered, if not openly alarmed-elementary and high school graduating students are faring badly in English and Science and Math. In the last National Achievement Test and High School Readiness Test, examinees scored only 32 percent and 38 percent for English and Science and Math. The passing mark was 60 percent.

"It's all a function of reading," says Juan Miguel Luz, an undersecretary of the Department of Education. "The kids are not reading, or are not reading with comprehension."

He is probably completely right. But that explanation itself requires an explanation. Why are the kids not reading or not reading with comprehension?

I can imagine several reasons for it, but I don't know that most of them are solved easily.

The first is right there in the very subject that encapsulates reading: English. The reading-and writing-is done in English. As local teachers of Science and Math have pointed out long ago, their students double the work of their counterparts in the English-speaking world. They have to learn the language first, and then express scientific and mathematical concepts in it. Their counterparts merely have to deal with the second.

Language is the one formidable barrier to literacy in this country. Nothing shows it more than the circulation of newspapers, a mind-boggling fact that hit me like a thunderbolt in the course of attending media conferences in various parts of Asia. We are the odd-man-out in the region in many respects, chief of them being that our mass-circulation papers are in English. Elsewhere, the mass-circulation papers are in the local languages, with only the publications for expatriate audiences using English.

Now here's the kicker. The mass circulation broadsheets in this country come up to a total of only a million, probably less. The mass circulation newspapers in Bangkok, Malaysia, Japan, India and elsewhere in Asia run into millions individually. Those newspapers are read by mass and elite alike, by young and old alike. There and then you see the monumental obstacle to literacy that language poses in this country. We do not have a mass base of people reading newspapers.

But there's the rub, I don't know what the solution is. Because we also have a unique problem: while most of us can understand Filipino-or Tagalog-most of us read in English. While all of the talk shows on TV have converted to Tagalog because that is the language best understood in the country, newspapers cannot convert as well to it because that is not the language best read in the country. That is a huge divide, our spoken and written language, our oral and visual language, and I myself welcome suggestions on how to bridge it.

The second reason for the plunge in the reading skills of students is more patent. It is the same reason reading has declined in other parts of the world. That is the overrunning of TV and digital technology of the world. At least, digital technology, which is interactive, still offers reading by way of the Internet and the e-mail, though their horrendous impact on literate-ness, if not literacy, has been noted by no small number of teachers, particularly of grammar. TV, in particular, has wreaked havoc on a population that to begin with has never been universally or widely literate.

The decline in reading from the 1960s to the present is real, but also a little exaggerated. Even then, literacy was rife only among the upper and middle classes, never among the lower ones. But the fact that there was a strong middle class then made the gains in reading palpable. Bookstores did make money on books and not just on school supplies. There were several of them, competing ferociously in Avenida Rizal and elsewhere. Few people owned TV sets, and TV largely featured only canned serials. Journalism was print, and writers and editors carried a lot of clout with the public. They were the ones Marcos put in jail when he declared martial law in 1972.

Today, the quip, "I'll just wait for the movie" (rather than read the book), is not a quip at all. Reading, particularly of books, has fallen to an all-time low, no small thanks to the advent of Cable TV and the plenitude of (pirated) video.

Now here I can only hope that the downward trend can be slowed down, or curbed. It can't be stopped altogether. Indeed, I have friends who once read voraciously, who now tell me it's all they can do to read a few books a year, they'd rather watch DVDs. Alternatively, we can always explore the advantages digital technology offers. The e-mail was one of the biggest contributors to Edsa II: It allowed expatriate Filipinos to participate in their country's affairs in real time. The youth, in particular, grasping their world in more iconic ways; maybe we can improve their visual aesthetics while trying to impress upon them the need to supplement it with reading. I do know the problem of reading is more than one that can be solved in, or by, the classroom.

One last important reason is that the DepEd now exists as an adjunct of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Education is there to prepare students to become OFWs, a development particularly demonstrated by the mushrooming of nursing courses or departments. That is, also quite incidentally how-and why-English is taught, which is not to open vistas to the world but to open up contractual visitations on the world. Then people read for the pure pleasure of reading, now people read for the sheer drudgery of communicating with employers. Then people read books, now people read immigration forms.

But this at least can be helped. That is by making education do what it is supposed to do. That is to educate.

Stupid

Stupid


Posted 00:17am (Mla time) Mar 17, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


COMPLETELY fortuitously, I had just seen the movie, "Assault on Precinct 13," a few days before the assault on Camp Bagong Diwa. The movie, a remake of the John Carpenter original that was a hit three decades ago, tells the story of a cop killer being transported to a maximum-security prison who is deposited instead in a local police precinct when his escorts encounter heavy snow. The precinct soon finds itself under siege.

Common sense says it is the cop killer's friends come to rescue him. Common sense is soon replaced by uncommon truth, which is that the murderous crew outside the precinct is not the cop killer's gang but his presumed nemeses, who are the cops themselves. As it turns out, they were once partners in crime, before the cops became greedy and demanded a bigger cut. The cop killer became so out of self-defense, and now his ex-partners want to make sure he doesn't get to court.

Short of a thorough, or at least independent, investigation of the Assault on Camp Bagong Diwa, that is going to be one lingering suspicion in the mind of the public. The authorities went full force to obliterate the inmates to make sure no one lives to tell the tale. A tale of sordid collusion, if not partnership, between jailers and jailees for mutual gain. That tale had been told before, Abu Sayyaf detainees, described as notorious terrorists, routinely escaping from what are also described, not without provoking much laughter from the public, as maximum-security institutions.

The last is no exception. That the most wanted criminals in the country could take over a prison presumed to be the local equivalent of Guantanamo must pose uncommon questions to common sense. Particularly so as the plan of the inmates to do so had apparently been known to the police as far back as last December. Which is not surprising: there is no secret in this country. Coups are also known well in advance, a fact that seems to have no deterrent effect on them. Largely because those who get wind of them either do not mind them or are part of them.

Either that was the case or Angelo Reyes decided on the action-movie solution to sandpaper the new embarrassment to his boss in Malacañang. For some reason, in this country the spectacle of dead suspects is believed to show resolve and efficiency on the part of law enforcers. Look how Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo preens before the cameras with the bullet-riddled body of a presumed drug-pusher slumped on the wheel of car or lying in a pool of blood on the pavement as background to show she is pushing back crime in Metro Manila. When all she is pushing back is public taste and basic respect for human life. But in this country, too, you call someone a criminal or terrorist, and he (or she) ceases to take on human properties and becomes, well, a cardboard villain in a brainless movie.

"I commend the government team led by Secretary Angelo Reyes that exhausted all peaceful means to resolve the Bicutan crisis, weighed their options after an extended standoff, and finally decided to use force as a last resort," Arroyo said in the wake of the massacre. What exhausted all peaceful means? What weighed options? What last resort?

Did the prisoners' takeover pose any imminent threat to the life or limb of any official or inmate of the prison? No. Of course, it had resulted in the deaths of three guards and two inmates. If so, then the case should have been thoroughly investigated after the prisoners surrendered and the guilty punished by all the laws of Allah or Jehovah. Why should they all be condemned to death?

Were the prisoners armed to the teeth or capable of holding out indefinitely? No. They had five handguns and a couple of grenades, a fact that could be known by a cursory inventory of the arms kept in the prison. Cut off the water and send the inmates pork, and you could flush them out.

But here's what takes the cake. Were their demands unreasonable? Judge for yourself. Those demands were: 1. They would not be bodily harmed. 2. Their human rights would be respected. 3. They would be assured a speedy trial. 4. Their lawyer would be allowed to see them. 5. Their appointed spokesman, "Ka Lando," would be available for media interviews. What is particularly objectionable about any, or all, of the above?

As it turned out, Reyes agreed to those demands, but only as a ploy. He was going to attack anyway. And they say Moros [Filipino Muslims] may not be believed, they are natural-born “traydors” [traitors].

This massacre -- that is what it is, pure and simple -- does not strike a blow against terrorism, it strikes a blow for it. The Moros have been complaining for so long about the double standard, about how a massacre by soldiers of their own becomes an encounter and how their retaliation becomes an atrocity. None of it excuses, or condones, the Abu Sayyaf's St. Valentine's Day massacre -- that was an act of terrorism, no more and no less than the massacre by government troops of their families -- but it does call attention to the iniquity. Call someone a terrorist and you can pretty much do anything you want with him.

You are a soldier, or combatant, your first duty is to escape if you are taken prisoner. If several soldiers overpower their Moro captors, killing some of them, and escape, we would applaud it and turn it into a movie. If their captors manage to catch up with them and slaughter them, we would shout our heads off about savagery and barbarism. And say they have lived up to their billing as terrorists. Now how would the massacre of the Moro inmates of Camp Bagong Diwa (what a monumentally ironic name, "Bagong Diwa") look from the other side? As the handiwork of people you can sit down and reason with? As justice truly served?

It is nothing more or less than an act of absolute stupidity.

Deviant

Deviant


Posted 00:18am (Mla time) Mar 16, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE FIVE anti-smut bills in the House of Representatives have their counterparts in four anti-smut bills in the Senate. These are Sen. Sergio Osmeña's SB 480, Sen. Manuel Villar's SB 753, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada's SB 877, and Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr.'s SB 1186. They variously call for the prohibition of the publication, sale, distribution, demonstration, performance, exhibition of lewd, indecent and pornographic materials and acts.

I've said my piece on the dangers of these bills, posing as they do a threat to freedom of expression, freedom of the press and democracy in general. I need not repeat it. It needs only be said that its premise is prior restraint, a most frightening idea, putting as it does the burden of proof on creators to prove their creations are not smutty rather than on their detractors to prove they are. They invert the natural order of things in a democracy. Its equivalent is presuming a suspect guilty unless he can be proven innocent. That is an engraved invitation to tyranny.

I skimmed through the Senate bills, and when I got to the part about what constitutes pornography, I had the impression, as with the House bills, that their authors had much, well, fun "researching" it. Osmeña's bill has five whole sections on it. They include: "masturbation, oral and anal sex, autoeroticism, excretion such as urination and edema materials; sadomasochistic sex, bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, bondage and sex with sacrilege, sex acts between and among children"; “nudity of the human body and its various parts such as male and female genitals, pubic region, buttocks, female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola, male genitals in a discernibly turgid state," etc. etc.

At least it has a nice turn of phrase, "male genitals in a discernibly turgid state." Though one must ask what a "discernibly turgid state" is. Is it a rod stuck out at a 45-degree angle, or more (super turgid?), or less (semi-turgid?)? I am reminded again of DiCaprio/Hughes in "The Aviator" demonstrating before the American Film Association Censorship Board with the aid of a mathematician that Jane Russell's breasts are no more prominent or shockingly exposed than those of other actresses that have appeared in movies the board approved. We are reduced to the same primitive state.

The others are more of the same. I was particularly amused by Jinggoy's bill, which has a special section on "sexually deviant acts," which include: "1. buggery: sodomy, bestiality, pederastia, 2: algolagnia: sadism or active algolagnia, masochism or passive algolagnia, 3. necrophilism, 4. fellatio or irrumation, 5. cunnilingus, 6. anilungus, 7. urolagnia, 8. coprophilia, 9. masturbation.” I really must borrow his XXX tapes! Or pirated XXX DVDS!

But you get an idea of where this is going when masturbation and oral sex get to be qualified as sexually deviant acts. And pity their spouses.

The reference to X material isn't completely a joke. That is where you will find most of these things. They are never, or almost never, depicted in movies for general distribution. The only aboveground movie where I've seen all of the above under Jinggoy's classification of "sexually deviant acts" is Nagisa Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses." It was shown in the Manila International Film Festival way back in the early 1980s, which caused a stir not just because of its seemingly pornographic elements but because it ran counter to the sexual prudishness of the martial law regime (I tell you those things are allied, prudishness and tyranny) -- and Imelda was the patron of the MIFF. I remember that the "FF" in "MIFF" took on new meanings. For those born yesterday, "FF" means "fighting fish," the old term for hardcore material.

"In the Realm of the Senses" is now considered a classic. The 4th Edition of Film Guide says: "The film celebrates their [a couple in pre-war militarist Japan] passion, steadfastly confronting even its most alarming implications. But it's also the most involving [and therefore disturbing] film about voyeurism since 'Rear Window.' As ever, Mishima broaches taboos not in a spirit of adolescent daring, but in the knowledge that the most deep-rooted taboos are personal, not social."

But otherwise, as I said, you will find the acts described by Jinggoy as deviant only in movies that are not shown in movie houses. Not even in the province, home to "insertions" -- not unlike the "insertions" Malacañang and Congress like to make on the budget, which are more obscene. You will find them only in material that lies in the furtive corners of Quiapo, Greenhills, Marikina Riverside, and Makati Square. Normally with someone even more furtively proclaiming its existence and offering to lead you through a maze to a secret lair.

Which is where the authors of these bills probably got their, well, research materials. Which they have kept and added to a growing library, classified alphabetically or by porn star, in aid of legislation.

Frankly, I don't know why Congress is wasting our money on these things. "Bomba," "bold," "ST," "pene" movies or photos -- call them what you will, they've been with us for a long time and will be with us for a long time. They have a way of surging and ebbing naturally like the tides. Not quite incidentally, I don't know where the legislators got this idea that the sight of "nude or scantily-dressed photographs of a woman or man," as Magsaysay's bill puts it, induces rape, as some of the bills suggest. I have yet to know of a scientific study that showed this. It's mere speculation. I can argue just as speculatively, though probably more convincingly, that masturbation lessens rape and other sex crimes.

I'd be more scared of those who don't. They are more likely to be, well, deviant.

Music of the night

Music of the night


Posted 11:01pm (Mla time) Mar 14, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 15, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


I SAW the movie version of "The Phantom of the Opera" determined to find much good in it. It is one of my favorite musicals, a work of genius from conception to execution. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of those composers who straddle classical and pop with equal ease, and his works have as much claim to "opera" as Puccini's. In but two decades, he has produced three towering "rock operas," though only the first really has much to do with rock. Those are "Jesus Christ, Superstar," "Evita" and "Phantom." Tim Rice wrote the libretto for "JCS" and "Evita" and Charles Hart for "Phantom."

All have been turned into movies. The first two are not bad, but I still prefer the original stage versions. Certainly, Ian Gillian of Deep Purple is worlds better than Ted Neely. Gillian turned screaming into an art; Neely, well, let us be charitable and say he truly gave an impression of Christ wracked with pain. Madonna gave Patti Lupone a run for her money (an apt metaphor for Evita), but the stage version of the rally at Casa Rosada leading up to "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" is by far the more thrilling and moving. And makes a huge case for why myth often overwhelms deeds in politics.

The critics did not particularly like the movie version of "Phantom," and laid the blame on the lack of charisma of the actors. Alas, there is truth to it. To their credit, the movie actors all have mellifluous voices. Michael Crawford, the original Phantom, has power, but he tends to be throaty in the higher registers, which is a little annoying at the particularly dramatic moments. Gerald Butler has a more fluid voice, but he can't seem to register the same degree of angst. Not consistently anyway: he does so toward the ending, singing his Phantom version of "That's All I Ask of You" with heart-rending ache.

Patrick Wilson, as Christine's young lover Raoul, has a limpid voice, but as a friend of mine texted me, the whole deal seems stacked in favor of the Phantom: What woman would prefer him to the other guy, however disfigured? I was reminded of what a critic said about "First Knight," which had Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot. The movie, he said, strained credulity. What woman in her right mind would prefer Richard Gere to Sean Connery even at Connery's age? Good point: It's not the looks, or the age.

But my own disappointment with the movie has to do not with its acting but with its conception. At the very least, it dispels the sinister aspect of the Phantom, the sense of menace he radiates, alongside his romantic and creative qualities. That is not helped by makeup, which makes the Phantom look like he had just been roughed up by goons after a night of carousing, nothing more. Which are not beyond the curative ministrations of Vicki Bello et al. The original Phantom, essayed by Lon Chaney, which set new standards in Gothic horror in films, had him sporting only a fleshless skull.

It is even less helped by the relative cheerfulness of the Phantom's surroundings. The part where the Phantom leads Christine to his subterranean lodgings, which starts with the menacing strains of the "Phantom" theme and ends with the soaring "Music of the Night" is marred by opulence. If the Phantom had delivered Christine in a gondola to a kingdom by the river, he could not have produced a more "MGM" feel. When the Phantom sings, "Turn your face away/ From the garish light of day," you are hard put to understand what he's talking about. This is garish light of day.

This brings me to the most essential point. Webber's and Hart's "Phantom" is not just a love story, it is a grand love story. What sets "Phantom" apart from Dracula, the other love-starved monster (Butler does a good deal of cape-swirling), and "Beauty and the Beast," which is also about a heroine seeing past ghastly appearance with the eyes of true love, is its exploration of the creative and destructive power of genius, the fascinating and repelling visage of art, the tension between moral convention and artistic license. The Phantom is more than a love-struck fool, he is the epitome of beauty and beastliness. Anyone who has had the creative urge knows the thin line between brilliance and madness. From the start my sympathies have been with the Phantom, not Raoul.

Charles Baudelaire postulated once, not unlike the Phantom, that normality, convention and ordinary life were illusory and that the real, essential, creative world was to be found not in the day but in the night. I don't know if Hart is a fan of the French Symbolists, but compare the lines about the garish light of day with these from Baudelaire's "Meditation": "The sun sinks moribund beneath an arch/ And like a long shroud rustling from the East/ Hark, Love, the gentle Night is on the march." The phrase, "music of the night," is a rich one, reverberating with all sorts of meaning. It suggests that music may truly be found in the night, in the unconscious, in the unfettered self, which is also the wellspring of murder and mayhem.

Christine's dilemma, loudly echoed in the stage version, is also a magnificent one, something that has bedeviled artists since time began. Which is: How much of yourself do you surrender to art? I still remember something a friend of mine told me a long time ago. To succeed in art, he said, you must be ruthless. That was the word he used: "ruthless." You have to turn your back on "normality," or pass "the point of no return," as the Phantom puts it. That is never an easy decision. All of which gave the original "Phantom" such incredible power, emotionally and intellectually, which just isn't there in the movie.

Still, go watch it, if only for the music. If not courtesy of SM, courtesy of Edu Manzano's favorite scourge.

Music of the night

Music of the night


Posted 11:01pm (Mla time) Mar 14, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 15, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


I SAW the movie version of "The Phantom of the Opera" determined to find much good in it. It is one of my favorite musicals, a work of genius from conception to execution. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of those composers who straddle classical and pop with equal ease, and his works have as much claim to "opera" as Puccini's. In but two decades, he has produced three towering "rock operas," though only the first really has much to do with rock. Those are "Jesus Christ, Superstar," "Evita" and "Phantom." Tim Rice wrote the libretto for "JCS" and "Evita" and Charles Hart for "Phantom."

All have been turned into movies. The first two are not bad, but I still prefer the original stage versions. Certainly, Ian Gillian of Deep Purple is worlds better than Ted Neely. Gillian turned screaming into an art; Neely, well, let us be charitable and say he truly gave an impression of Christ wracked with pain. Madonna gave Patti Lupone a run for her money (an apt metaphor for Evita), but the stage version of the rally at Casa Rosada leading up to "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" is by far the more thrilling and moving. And makes a huge case for why myth often overwhelms deeds in politics.

The critics did not particularly like the movie version of "Phantom," and laid the blame on the lack of charisma of the actors. Alas, there is truth to it. To their credit, the movie actors all have mellifluous voices. Michael Crawford, the original Phantom, has power, but he tends to be throaty in the higher registers, which is a little annoying at the particularly dramatic moments. Gerald Butler has a more fluid voice, but he can't seem to register the same degree of angst. Not consistently anyway: he does so toward the ending, singing his Phantom version of "That's All I Ask of You" with heart-rending ache.

Patrick Wilson, as Christine's young lover Raoul, has a limpid voice, but as a friend of mine texted me, the whole deal seems stacked in favor of the Phantom: What woman would prefer him to the other guy, however disfigured? I was reminded of what a critic said about "First Knight," which had Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot. The movie, he said, strained credulity. What woman in her right mind would prefer Richard Gere to Sean Connery even at Connery's age? Good point: It's not the looks, or the age.

But my own disappointment with the movie has to do not with its acting but with its conception. At the very least, it dispels the sinister aspect of the Phantom, the sense of menace he radiates, alongside his romantic and creative qualities. That is not helped by makeup, which makes the Phantom look like he had just been roughed up by goons after a night of carousing, nothing more. Which are not beyond the curative ministrations of Vicki Bello et al. The original Phantom, essayed by Lon Chaney, which set new standards in Gothic horror in films, had him sporting only a fleshless skull.

It is even less helped by the relative cheerfulness of the Phantom's surroundings. The part where the Phantom leads Christine to his subterranean lodgings, which starts with the menacing strains of the "Phantom" theme and ends with the soaring "Music of the Night" is marred by opulence. If the Phantom had delivered Christine in a gondola to a kingdom by the river, he could not have produced a more "MGM" feel. When the Phantom sings, "Turn your face away/ From the garish light of day," you are hard put to understand what he's talking about. This is garish light of day.

This brings me to the most essential point. Webber's and Hart's "Phantom" is not just a love story, it is a grand love story. What sets "Phantom" apart from Dracula, the other love-starved monster (Butler does a good deal of cape-swirling), and "Beauty and the Beast," which is also about a heroine seeing past ghastly appearance with the eyes of true love, is its exploration of the creative and destructive power of genius, the fascinating and repelling visage of art, the tension between moral convention and artistic license. The Phantom is more than a love-struck fool, he is the epitome of beauty and beastliness. Anyone who has had the creative urge knows the thin line between brilliance and madness. From the start my sympathies have been with the Phantom, not Raoul.

Charles Baudelaire postulated once, not unlike the Phantom, that normality, convention and ordinary life were illusory and that the real, essential, creative world was to be found not in the day but in the night. I don't know if Hart is a fan of the French Symbolists, but compare the lines about the garish light of day with these from Baudelaire's "Meditation": "The sun sinks moribund beneath an arch/ And like a long shroud rustling from the East/ Hark, Love, the gentle Night is on the march." The phrase, "music of the night," is a rich one, reverberating with all sorts of meaning. It suggests that music may truly be found in the night, in the unconscious, in the unfettered self, which is also the wellspring of murder and mayhem.

Christine's dilemma, loudly echoed in the stage version, is also a magnificent one, something that has bedeviled artists since time began. Which is: How much of yourself do you surrender to art? I still remember something a friend of mine told me a long time ago. To succeed in art, he said, you must be ruthless. That was the word he used: "ruthless." You have to turn your back on "normality," or pass "the point of no return," as the Phantom puts it. That is never an easy decision. All of which gave the original "Phantom" such incredible power, emotionally and intellectually, which just isn't there in the movie.

Still, go watch it, if only for the music. If not courtesy of SM, courtesy of Edu Manzano's favorite scourge.

A mess of our making

A mess of our making


Posted 11:04pm (Mla time) Mar 13, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 14, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


RAUL Gonzalez says he cannot understand the fuss over PERC's ranking of the Philippines as the second most corrupt country in Asia. "We should just disregard that. That is a conclusion of people who are holier than thou. Even the United Nations has corruption. Even the UN secretary general is charged with corruption."

Gonzalez is the justice secretary. There and then, you see why there is no justice in this country.

So what if corruption thrives in other parts of the world, or governing bodies? It does not excuse our own. That, of course, is a favorite Filipino pastime-citing others' iniquity to exculpate ours. It isn't just Gonzalez's favorite pastime, it is most Filipino officials'. That was the argument of the generals when one of their own, Carlos Garcia, was haled to court for stealing millions of pesos from the AFP: the civilian government was far dirtier.

Well, if so, then let us prosecute the guilty civilian officials as well. Why should that excuse Garcia, or lighten his guilt? The same is true of the UN secretary: If he is corrupt-though clearly Gonzalez has a future in comedy suggesting that Kofi Annan is no better than Jose Pidal-then let the world hound him and punish him. Why should the fact that he has been charged with corruption make us forget that GMA(Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is charged with making this country the second most corrupt in Asia?

Which is the other point: The UN has not been classified as the second most corrupt anything; the Philippines has. That suggests an epic scale of pillage. As someone quipped last week in a text message, shortly before Diosdado Macapagal took office, we were second only to Japan in economic potential. Shortly after his daughter, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, took office, we were second only to Indonesia in corruption. That took less than half a century to accomplish. It's the kind of joke that hurts to laugh.

But what is particularly bothersome about Gonzalez's suggestion that we just ignore the PERC findings is not its fantastic absurdity but the absurd reality that we are in fact practicing it. We are routinely ignoring corruption, great or small, but particularly great: the bigger the theft is, the more it disappears, or becomes acceptable. Outside looking in, the one astonishing thing that has happened to this country over the last decade or so is not that it has plumbed to new depths of venality but that no one seems unduly bothered by it.

No uncontrollable public outrage and a demand for an accounting have arisen over PERC's revelations. Which is the even more fundamental difference between other countries and us. It's true, public officials elsewhere have been known to be corrupt, but even truer, they at least bother to hide it and resign when they are exposed. Local crooks do not have to suffer this inconvenience. Here, you call someone corrupt, he has a good laugh and call you inggit, or envious. Or, like Gonzalez, call you holier than him, which my neighborhood mechanic definitely is. As the congressmen have shown-they are livid because they did not get to reinsert their prime pork cuts in a bicameral budget hearing-government has declared open season on pillage.

The only one who seems to have been vigorously incensed by the PERC findings is Jinggoy Estrada, for reasons that are as pure as driven cattle. If, as PERC shows, the Arroyo government has been no cleaner than Erap's, he asks, how come Erap is in jail and GMA is in Baguio? A good question-though that again is not an argument for freeing Erap, only for jailing GMA as well. PERC did suggest GMA has stolen less than Marcos but just as much as Erap, a function not of restraint, but simply a function of having less to steal. Indeed, that a government can steal at this scale while the country grovels in near-bankruptcy is a feat worthy of Ripley's. The image of trawlers siphoning an over-fished sea to get what's been left behind leaps to mind.

But lest we truly feel holier than thou and think GMA alone is guilty of turning this country into the second most corrupt in Asia, let's think again. Of course, she has done so, but she has done so not just through the tolerance of the most influential sectors of society but through their active collaboration. Everyone knew GMA was cheating and stealing during those elections. Everyone knew the Comelec wasn't just partisan but was engineering the elections to favor GMA. Everyone knew GMA was using taxpayers' money wholesale and the Pagcor and PCSO to campaign relentlessly-and expensively-advertising her virtues on TV well up to Election Day.

You even had political pundits predicting in smug, worldly, in-the-know tones that she would win precisely because of those things. No one thought to say that if that was so, then the point was to protest it violently. What is business complaining about today? It was the first to agree to this patent corruption because a GMA presidency, rather an FPJ one, would presumably be good for business. What is the Church complaining about? Jaime Cardinal Sin was openly plugging for GMA, in the same way Ronald Reagan was plugging for Marcos on the time-hallowed principle that "I don't mind that he's an SOB so long as he's our SOB." And what is civil society complaining about? St. Paul was stricken into enlightenment by a thunderbolt from heaven, Code-NGO was stricken blind by P1.4 billion in Peace Bonds.

What is all this saying but that our moral guardians protest corruption only when it does not benefit them? We're the second most corrupt country in Asia?

Well, I did get another text message that said Jose Pidal is contesting the idea, saying we will be second to none.

Tale of two countries

Tale of two countries


Posted 00:45am (Mla time) Mar 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 10, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THERE have been some changes. Years ago, you couldn't find a group of legislators to actively take up a position against the Catholic Church, particularly on family planning and women's reproductive rights. During Fidel Ramos' time, there was pretty much only Juan Flavier, then the health secretary and now a senator.

The reason for it was obvious: secretaries exist at the sufferance of their president, legislators exist at the sufferance of their voters. The Catholic Church having a tremendous influence on voters, legislators exist also at the sufferance of the Church. The Church is still able to stop candidates from winning, particularly at the district level, even if it's less and less known to get candidates to win. The Iglesia ni Cristo, El Shaddai and Couples for Christ have been more successful in the latter.

Flavier does belong right now to the current group of legislators batting for HB 3773, a bill calling for Responsible Parenthood and Population Management, which has the Catholic bishops up in arms. In the mid-1990s, he was positively brilliant, more than holding his own against Jaime Cardinal Sin. Religion might carry a lot of clout in this country, but more so humor, and Flavier stood tall in it even in his diminutive size. Wit doused hellfire, and Mr. Condom did make considerable inroads in pushing for some kind of family planning despite the chastity belt the Church put up against it.

Alas, only to see the gains pushed back, ironically under a woman President, or so if the legislators, among them two women -- Risa Hontiveros and Imee Marcos -- are to be believed. The "half-hearted implementation" of laws protecting women, they say, has caused domestic violence to soar to an all-time high and women's sexual health to be neglected.

I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."

I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In "All About My Mother," a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.

These are themes that could not have been aired, except in clandestine defiance, during Franco's time and before. Now they are par for the course. As-something that would shock local censors-are scenes of disrobing. Paz Vega, the current star of "Spanglish," gained fame much earlier for her bold role in "Sex and Lucia." I saw her also in "Carmen," the narrative version of the opera, which had her repeatedly in the throes of passion in all her magnificent nakedness. I did say in a column about censorship last week that convention changes.

Much of the current liberalism, or radicalism as some might call it, owes to the new minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has abolished all laws discriminating against homosexuals. He has implemented gender parity by having a Cabinet composed of eight women and eight men. The new government's first bill in Parliament, not quite incidentally, was increasing the penalties for domestic violence, which Zapatero called an "unacceptable evil," accounting for the death of one woman per week in Spain. Sex-change surgery will now fall under the national health plan. Interestingly, Zapatero's moves are not being done in opposition to public opinion. The polls show that more than half of Spanish citizens support gay marriages and gays adopting children.

Even well before Zapatero, the winds of change had been blowing fiercely. Six years after Franco's death, in 1981, Parliament legalized divorce and four years later legalized abortion under specified circumstances, the specifications being liberalized a year later. This was done amid ferocious Church efforts to stop it. Today, only the Opus Dei continues to defy the winds of change.

It should be interesting to explore the reasons for why these changes took place in the country that for three centuries turned us into its image and likeness. My Spanish friend himself swears it was education that did the trick. But the true answer may prove deeper and more complex than that. Quite interestingly also, the mainstream Spanish Catholic Church (the Opus Dei excepted) turned against Franco during his last years, much as the bulk of the Philippine Catholic Church (the conservative bishops excepted) turned against Ferdinand Marcos during his last few years. Well, the downfall of Marcos led to the ascension of Cory Aquino, who felt a monumental debt of gratitude to Cardinal Jaime Sin.

Therein lies a tale in itself. But one best told another day.

Resurrection

Resurrection


Posted 00:15am (Mla time) Mar 09, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 9, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


ON WEEKENDS particularly, the place now looks not unlike Venice Beach in Sta. Monica, California, or closer to home, Boracay. Shops selling souvenirs abound, musicians and mime artists perform in various corners to the delight of onlookers. That is the strip on Roxas Boulevard, from near the US Embassy to well past Aristocrat going in the direction of the CCP. I've been there several times the past year or so, and been astonished by the sea-change that has taken place.

Unfortunately, not literally. The sea hasn't changed, it's as grimy as ever, from the fuel leaking out from the ships docked in the harbor. Though at night, it doesn't look so bad, particularly when the moon is out and a strong breeze whips through the "Bay Area," the lights blinking on the horizon gleaming on the surface of the undulating water. Last Christmas particularly, when the weather dipped crazily and city residents got to dust off their Baguio attire, it was good to be there. You didn't need to drive off to the mountains or sail to the sea to get a respite. You just had to brave the traffic.

On a good night (at least for business), cars line up the side of the street near the bay as far as the eye can see. Not infrequently, you'll find two rows of cars parked side by side. The street near the Aristocrat restaurant going to Adriatico Circle looks like Woodstock as well. I don't know which caused the spillover crowd, the Bay Area or Adriatico, the latter being the older kid on the block. But whichever the case, the place, to use a phrase favored by the kids, now rocks.

Manila Mayor Lito Atienza I've associated over the last few years with the plan to demolish Mehan Gardens in Arroceros and replace it with a high school. Or so his blueprint indicated -- many environmentalists, who protested the idea violently, suspected the real replacement would be a commercial complex, the high school being just a small part of it. I don't know what has happened to his plan-I still see greenery in the area. I would most certainly urge Atienza to stop and rethink it. But that said, I've got to say he has done some pretty neat things for Nick Joaquin's favorite city.

What he has wrought in the Bay Area is quite impressive. The place looked like a mugger's paradise in the past, even with the street lamps throwing a bright orange light on the walkways at night. You never knew if the joggers there were out to improve their health or their fortunes. While at this, I love the T-shirt my son bought a couple of years ago, that says, "Quiapo Jogging Society," showing a physically fit snatcher being chased by a pot-bellied cop. But that's another story.

As I was saying, you've got to like the transformation of the place to what it is now. The place must be doing brisk business. You get to hear all sorts of things, about how much cut Atienza and Co. are raking from this, but this is one of those cases where I personally don't mind that they do. In these times of radically diminished expectations, you get to be positively grateful for corruption that at least leaves something tangible in its wake. Elsewhere in this country, all it leaves is a bad taste in the mouth.

But it's not just the transformation of the Bay Area you've got to be impressed with. It's the transformation of the city itself. The physical side of it isn't bad as it is. I like what the city government has done to Rizal Avenue, near the intersection of Claro M. Recto Avenue. That place holds a great deal of nostalgia for me. I frequented it when I was in college in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That was where the bookstores -- National, Alemar's, Goodwill, etc. -- and movie houses were. That became a dark and forlorn place after the LRT was built, most of the grand places there turning seedy and dilapidated from lack of patronage and from neglect. The area in front of National Bookstore has now been reclaimed from smog and traffic, paved with red brick, and turned over to pedestrians. The result is by no means pedestrian, though I've seen the place only in daytime when I've sought out the bargains in National.

More than physical, you feel a sense of something moribund being revived. Manila seemed near to dying for a long time. During Alfredo Lim's time as mayor, you associated it with dead bodies floating in the Pasig River, carrying tags that proclaimed their former occupants to be drug pushers and warning others not to copy their example.

Quiapo was no-man's land, particularly the Muslim part of it, which saw much bloodletting between cops and criminals, and it wasn't always clear who was who. Today, you'll find Pajeros parked there, and respectably attired men and women busily going through the shops. Well, that isn't Atienza's doing entirely. It's the doing of Bong Revilla's and Edu Manzano's favorite scourge, the pirated DVD. But truly this country reeks of epic irony, or magic realism. That a community known for conservative beliefs should be uplifted by a product Allah might not always approve of, it's something only whimsical Fate could have thought of.

Now, if only Atienza would listen to the environment groups and keep Mehan Gardens intact, he might yet go down, or up, as one of the best mayors Manila had. Along with Arsenio Lacson, who gave it pride, and Antonio "Yeba" Villegas, who gave it soul. Prosperity isn't just material gain. Berlin is one of the greatest cities in the world, and the most impressive thing about it is not the grand monuments and huge buildings and various testaments to commerce that dot it. It is the greenery that does. One-fourth of the entire place is parks and wildlife, veritable pockets of forest in a bustling city.

Something for him to think about in this season of Lent, in this season of resurrections.

Terrorist

Terrorist


Posted 00:55am (Mla time) Mar 08, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the March 8, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


BARELY had I written about the dangers of the anti-smut bills, saying among other things that it posed a menace to democracy, being all of a piece with moves toward abridging various freedoms, when Armed Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Edilberto Adan went out of his way to prove me right. From another front, he wants stiff sanctions imposed on reporters who interview terrorists.

"[The terrorists] kill and bomb, and then the media give them the opportunity to talk. It's stupidity on the part of some media to allow these terrorists or people identified with terrorist groups to air their complaints. [Interviewing terrorists] is an abuse of press freedom. They [the terrorists] are using the so-called press freedom to advance themselves. So they are the ones abusing us."

Now, what is so frightening about that proposal?

To begin with, its premise is best confined only to action movies. In action movies (which are called that because they have more action than thought), you know who the terrorists are. You are left in little doubt of it, as they are introduced from the start committing sadistic acts: slitting men's throats, raping women and blowing toddlers in walkers to bits in outdoor cafés. And action movies have become more and more inventive in depicting villains wreaking atrocious mayhem, some with fiendish humor, aware of the caricature they are making, others completely mean-spiritedly, taking themselves seriously and their audiences for a ride.

You are left in no doubt about who the terrorists are moreover because in the past they were slit-eyed or spoke with guttural accents, being Vietnamese or Russians (Rambo's foes), while today they are bearded and speak with Middle Eastern accents, being Arabs or Muslims (typically airplane hijackers). Of course, you root for the hero(es) and want nothing more than the terrorists to get their just desserts.

Unfortunately, life is more complicated than that, as more serious movies like Oliver Stone's "Platoon" and Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" showed in the past, and as movies from the Arab countries themselves, not least of them Iran, which has been making waves in film, show today. Easy to see which version of life is more in keeping with reality.

To accept Adan's proposal is to embrace a Steven Seagal view of the world, and obliterate dark, shadowy and faceless villains. Well, in real life, those faceless villains do have faces and live lives not unlike ours, and see the people who wreak mayhem upon them and their children as terrorists.

That brings me to the heart of the matter. What is frightening about Adan's open proposal is the same thing that was frightening about Alfredo Lim's et al.'s veiled proposal in the past to send drug-pushers and other dregs of the earth to their Maker, preferably inside steel drums rolled on to the Pasig River. It reposes all power of judgment about who the dregs of the earth are upon them. They are judge, jury and, completely literally, executioner.

At the very least, it reposes that power in those whose interest, or justification, or survival rests on the exaggeration of the threat. We do not need to hypothesize on what will happen if we just took the Armed Forces of the Philippines' word on who our friends and enemies are. That actually happened several years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, when Gloria Macaoagal-Arroyo took on George Bush's fascistic airs and imposed a blackout in Basilan and neighboring places. The media were prevented from covering the military campaign against the Abu Sayyaf. All we had to go by were self-serving statements about how they were winning the war. If Fr. Cirilo Nacorda were not a priest, he would have been severely sanctioned for charging that the military was actually coddling the Abu Sayyaf rather than fighting it. That would have constituted abetting terrorism.

At the very most, it reposes the power of judging who the terrorists are upon those whose actions in the past and present, if Amnesty International and other human rights bodies are to be believed, fall squarely under the category of "terrorism." That is not unlike asking a philandering judge to sit over a case involving infidelity. I do not recall that the military called for sanctions to be imposed on those who interviewed the Oakwood mutineers, who threatened to blow up their hostage tower if attacked. I do recall that Ms Arroyo got very, very pissed off and wanted those sanctions imposed on a reporter from GMA Network Inc. for doing exactly that. But she backed off when she got flak from the media for the obvious attempt at censorship. All of which merely shows how capriciously government can use the label "terrorist."

There is always another side to the story, as Al Jazeera, the news organization Bush tried to suppress in the US after 9/11, has shown. Indeed, as it has shown even more clearly, the other side of the story is probably closer to the truth. Certainly, Al Jazeera's stories about the US invasion of Iraq are more believable than Fox Network's stories about the US liberation of that country. Except in this country, of course.

The business of journalists, much like those of artists and other writers, is to keep an open mind, to probe as deeply as resources and deadline permit, to challenge accepted truths, especially official ones. That was what Edgar Snow did for China (he wrote "Red Star Over China," now a classic journalism textbook) and that was what John Pilger did for Vietnam at a time when both countries were reviled as constituting the Yellow Peril. "Terrorism" is a terrifying word: You are bound to find it practiced most by the fanatics who vow to fight it.

Adan should think again. He insists on imposing severe penalties on journalists who interview terrorists, no one may want to interview him.

Trojan horse

Trojan horse


Posted 11:47pm (Mla time) Mar 01, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 2, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THERE are five -- yes, five -- bills pending in Congress attempting to stop what, to go by their sheer preponderance, they reckon to be a scourge of the land. Which is pornography. The bills range from the almost apologetic to the openly apoplectic. One is positively apocalyptic, invoking the wrath of God to fall on those human creations that do not extol His glory.

These bills are: HB 445, "prohibiting the publication of lewd photographs and sex stories and articles in tabloid and broadsheets," by M.E. Zamora; HB 2838, creating a "local print media monitoring board in all municipalities and cities to prevent the proliferation of obscene publications," by Dodot Jaworski; HB 1278 "prohibiting the publication, sale or distribution, production, importation, and exhibition of obscene and pornographic materials and the demonstration, performance or exhibition in public of indecent and sexual acts" by Emmanuel Villanueva, son of the preacher man, and would-be president, Eddie V.; HB 2031, same as the last, by Eileen Buhain and Alan Peter Cayetano; and HB 2887, still same as the last, by Bienvenido Abante Jr.

The bills variously try to pin down what constitutes "lewd" or "pornographic" to a level of detail that almost makes you think their authors spent a great deal of time dwelling on it or are engaged in some kind of vicarious self-flagellation, projecting their fantasies and prescribing punishments for them. I can almost picture their research assistants watching strip shows intently in dark joints and telling grinning acquaintances who espy them in scornful tones, "In aid of legislation, pare.”

But this is the sort of seemingly trivial thing that has not very trivial consequences. You can't afford to dismiss it blithely. I can appreciate how some parents might feel at having the frail sensibilities of their children assaulted by ads in newspapers, TV and billboards that show women (and men) in a state that little improves on the one they got launched into the world in. Though while at this, surely the frail sensibilities of those children stand to be more ravaged by ads that ask them to change the color of their skin through skin whiteners? Yet no congressman has thought to protest this. But these bills do not make things better, as decency goes, they make things worse. This is one cure that is patently worse than the affliction.

At the very least, it poses a danger not to pornography but to art. One would think our experience with the old MTRCB, which banned "Belle Epoque" and X-ed "Schindler's List" would have taught us a lesson in caution. Indeed, one would have thought our experience with "Live Show," a perfectly reputable work about a disreputable subject, would have taught us a lesson in manners. Pornography is not an easy animal to identify. I had thought several court rulings in the past had settled the issue, which is that naked bodies, particularly as locked in the exchange of body fluids, the thing that particularly stokes the wrath of the authors of these bills, should be interpreted in context.

The five bills themselves, vying with one another to ferret out evil and cast it into eternal fire, are a surefire guarantee of a plunge to an artistic Stone Age, where only "The Sound of Music" can be shown. Maybe not even that, as some idiot can always say there is something ungodly in Julie Andrews' choice of a widower to a nunnery.

More than to art, the bills pose a clear and present danger to freedom of expression. Or indeed to freedom of the press. This is not something only tabloids should be protesting against, all of media should. Jaworski's bill is especially frightening in that respect. It orders "all publishers of periodical publications, including newspapers, tabloids, magazines, comic books, and other similar printed materials (to) furnish all the Local Board complimentary copies of all their publications." The local board consisting "of the Municipality/City Mayor as its ex-officio Chairman, the Municipal/City Legal Officer as its ex-officio Secretary, the President of the Liga ng mga Barangay, the President of the Pambayang Pederasyon ng mga Sangguniang Kabataan, and a representative from the women sector of the locality as its members."

Can an idea be more insidious, or idiotic? That is a throwback to the days of the Bureau of Standards for Mass Media, which Marcos created immediately after he imposed martial law to police the media. You'll still find it in countries like Malaysia where a board of bureaucrats and ass-lickers -- that is pornographic -- sit in judgment over the media.

And finally, these bills pose a danger to the society itself. I don't know if this is part of a plan to shift gears toward authoritarianism, but plan or not, it can be used to shift gears toward iron-fisted rule. It is all of a piece with the rhetoric and practice of anti-terrorism and with calls for emergency measures to meet all sorts of threats for the most part of government's own making. Anti-smut has always been the Trojan horse of fascism. It was so in Germany, when Nazi youth raided cabarets and Jewish synagogues alike, proclaiming both to be obscenities. Ironically, the cabarets became the last bastion of defense, in the form of satirical revues, against the coming of night.

Give bureaucrats and ass-lickers power and they are not going to stop at pornography, they are not going to stop at anything. The point is not to choose between the five bills, to embrace the one as more reasonable than the other. The point is to reject them altogether. The job of policing the ranks of media belongs to media, however they have often been remiss in it. That is so for all excesses of media, from lack of sensitivity to lack of taste.

The alternative is more than worse, it is disastrous.

Goons and government

Goons and government


Posted 10:59pm (Mla time) Mar 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 7, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


FOR once Miriam Defensor-Santiago made the sanest suggestion to improve this country's quality of life. That is for all the senators and congressmen to commit suicide.

She said this in the face of the House of Representatives' embittered excoriation of the Senate and anticipated acts of retaliation in the coming days. As the senators and congressmen were trading punches, Miriam suggested that it would be best if all of them just committed mass suicide. It would constitute "the best public service to the people."

I agree wholeheartedly, and would personally volunteer to assist in this noble task in every way possible, if they were to accept it like Japanese samurai after the shame of defeat. In aid of legislation: that would be thought to sustain me in helping to carry out that grim purpose.

Frankly, I can't understand why the legislators worry that this "squabble" would lead to a legislative impasse, or power crisis. That is the least of their worries. The first is what they are left with after looking like dogs snarling over scraps of meat.

Completely weirdly-onli in da Pilipins-the congressmen are bitter over the fact that the Senate approved the budget as they made it. The House budget calls for a pork barrel allocation of P40 million for each congressman and P120 million for each senator, down from P70 million and P200 million respectively. The congressmen made these reductions, not because they were struck by conscience but because they thought smugly they could get back the cutbacks when they met with the senators to reconcile their versions of the budget. That was how it went in the past.

Unfortunately for them, the Senate suddenly decided to break "tradition" and approve the House's version as submitted. At least, that is the Senate's story. The congressmen now say that is not completely true, the Senate did not approve their version in pristine form, it first tinkered with the intelligence fund to boost its own allocations by P1.3 billion before approving the House version. So now the congressmen are crying foul: the Senate did not just put one over them, it put two over them.

Is it possible the congressmen actually expect the public to show sympathy for their plight? Is it possible the senators actually expect the public to side with them? What is the issue here? Nothing more or less than how much of the taxpayers' money-your money, in case the fact escapes you-goes to each of them.

If this breathtaking farce proves anything, it does so two things.

The first is the opposite of what House Majority Leader Prospero Nograles proposes. He says the country "would be in a better state if it had a single parliament, with each member representing a clearly defined constituency." Nothing could be farther from the truth. That was already shown with dramatic force a couple of years ago when the House moved to impeach Hilario Davide on grounds of corruption.

At the very least, it was monumentally hypocritical in light of the congressmen's ferocious defense of the pork barrel, one of the biggest contributors to corruption in this country. While the pork barrel does not give the legislators the actual money allocated to them, it gives them the power to dispense that money. That guarantees very little of it will actually become roads and bridges and clinics. The pitfalls of the pork barrel are well known. The Church and other institutions have a point to call for it to be scrapped.

At the very most, it showed the monumental dangers-for this particular country-of a parliamentary system that reposed power in the hands of a unicameral body. That presumes the unicameral body will not act like a mob, a presumption the House has refuted repeatedly over the years, when it used its power to try to achieve the most wretched ends. Not the least of them trying to prevent their own-like Romeo Jalosjos and Mark Jimenez-from being brought to justice. And now to rake in as much loot as they can while the country grovels in misery.

A friend of mine is right: Don't they worry this spectacle goads taxpayers not to pay taxes?

The second thing this proves is that John Locke's proposition is perversely right for this country. Perversely because when he said, "Government governs best that governs least," he meant that government shouldn't interfere too much with the natural course of life because that is best regulated by the private sector and the market. Here, that is true for a completely different reason. That is, the government does not pose a good to society, it threatens harm to it. The less government governs, the less harm it wreaks.

That conclusion is inescapable. What astounds me, in particular, is the way government manages to reward, rather than punish, itself for failure. Crime riots, and the PNP asks for more people and arms, and get them- when crime riots precisely because they do nothing about it, other than commit it themselves. The countryside withers, and the congressmen ask for more Countryside Development Fund, also called pork barrel, and get it-when the countryside withers precisely because of the CDF. The country goes bankrupt, and the President asks for close to a trillion pesos in budget, and gets it-when the country has gone bankrupt precisely because of her.

I remember again what the Rabbi said in "Fiddler on the Roof" when asked if there was a proper blessing for the Czar. He replied, "Yes, there is: May God bless and keep the Czar-far away from us." We may invoke the same blessing upon our government.

I agree wholeheartedly with Miriam, but with a caveat. Why only senators and congressmen? A mass suicide of the executive and judiciary as well would cleanse this country more thoroughly than the Great Flood.