Prudence and Madness

After the Carl Ocab ghostwriting issue and the Misrepresentation issue, here now comes another sizzling hot scandal (though not blogging related anymore) that hits the blogosphere. Though initially I have promised NOT to write a reaction about this anymore because there are lots of posts about it already, reading some disturbing comments on some of the posts pushed me to voice out my opinion and some concerns.

What “sizzling hot scandal” am I talking about here?

For those of you who still don’t know, there’s a Manila Standard columnist, Malu Fernandez, who wrote an article entitled “From Boracay to Greece” and published in the People Asia magazine. In the article, she made some condescending remarks about OFWs such as:

However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.

While I was on the plane (where the seats were so small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh, popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga sann ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?” Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are you a domestic helper as well?” I though I had died and God had sent me to my very own private hell.

On my way back, I had to bravely take the economy flight once more. This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.

To read the full article, click on the thumbnails:

These images, together with enraged blog posts and comments, spread in the internet like wildfire. And as if to throw more wood to the fire, she wrote a second article which seemed worse than the first one.

Here are some excerpts:
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August, I think, is fast becoming the month of “blog scandals and wars”, with the ongoing commotion in the blogosphere superseding the waves made by the Philippine Blog Awards and the issue of invocation during secular gatherings.

So, what are the issues?

(For those who’re already familiar with the sizzling hot issues in the blogosphere nowadays, please skip the boring paragraphs that will follow. I’m recounting the issues for the sake of those who are M.I.A. or missing in action and for my friends who’re not really following the blogosphere that closely.)

1) Fobcast Episode 1 and the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs

In Mike and Marco’s FOBcast Episode 1, they said they think not all the winners of the recently concluded Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs Project of Ms. Toral are really that influential. Then, they went on “ridiculing” some of the blogs in the final list (or rather the week 11 list), which offended some folks. Personally, I don’t find anything offending about it at all. Like in any situations, there is a protagonist and an antagonist. They just chose to be the antagonist here.

But there were also those who expressed disappointment in the said event:

Everything said and done, I believe that the project is a failure due to the nuances of defining ‘influential’ both from Ms Toral and the participants. If the project was called The Top Ten Most Popular Filipino Blogs of 2007, then this failure might have been avoided since what is popular is easier to define than what is influential. - Lizette, in her post, “Bastardization: When Influential Meant Popular“

I believe that the focal point of the discussion was the use of the words “emerging” and “influential” in the title of the blog project.

Admittedly, the terms “emerging” and “influential” would rarely appear in the same sentence. Influence only comes with a degree of reputation and time-tested consistency and credibility- clearly, something that an emerging greenhorn would not have. - Benj, in his post, “Emerging and Influential: Irreconcilable?“

In this light, I also shared some of my thoughts about it:

Perhaps Benj is right for saying it’s hard to reconcile “emerging” with “influential”, being that to be able to exert much influence meant authority and that authority does come only after a bit more experience. But to analyze it with regards to the community of bloggers which participated in the said project, I think it’s enough to say that the winners did exert a kind of influence over those who voted. Most bloggers did vote for those they think exerted influence on them. And I think influence will always mean a measure of popularity. So, yes, it is a popularity contest relative to the group which participated in the writing project. That’s enough reason to believe that the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs project did serve its purpose.

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For us, people in their late 20’s (there, I said it), death is already something we’ve given a serious thought or two. As Serj puts it, think of the years between the present and the year we were in Grade 5, put that together with our age today and that’s when, one by one, we would inevitably start complaining of chronic illnesses, like hypertension, dyslipidemia, or if someone gets unlucky, cancer. Come to think of it, that time isn’t very far off actually, for the years pass us by faster now that we’re older than when we were younger.

This has been the topic of discussion when my friends and I went beer-drinking at La Mesa Grille in SM Mall of Asia after watching Ratatouille last Saturday. Or rather, this has been the topic of discussion for two weeks in a row. But we’re not quite that worried yet about aging and death. We simply thought of how the years have gone by and how through those years our friendship was strengthened. I guess Nietzchean philosophy still applies: what doesn’t kill a friendship strengthens it and it isn’t called poison either.

We talked about the time when one by one Death would stop for us and what we would do during everybody’s wake. Somebody joked about how their sons/daughters would be driving them to the wake because they would already be wheelchair-bound by then.

And they would still come late, as always, a friend quipped.

Laughing at the idea that our quirks would remain unchanged even when we’re already old and sagging, we agreed that for each one’s wake, those who remain will bring a bottle of that person’s favorite drink, pour him a shot in a jigger and put it on the coffin with several sticks of ciggies (even if he doesn’t smoke), lighter, and an ashtray and drink to his death and perhaps, rebirth, if there would be an afterlife. We believe that death must also be celebrated with joy like birth for death means that one has lived.

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