Category: social media

the krip & willie show

i hear the kill-willie burgis elements are lying low.   i wonder why.   good, if it’s to rethink the issue of child abuse, which is different from willie abuse.   good, if it’s to take stock and see that if you don’t watch local tv, if you don’t watch willie, and all you could be bothered to take in was the spliced/edited youtube video, then you don’t have a right to make any kind of judgement, which should never be removed from the context of Filipino mass culture, no matter how baduy or kadiri-to-death to burgis sensitivities.   good, if the self-righteous burgis elements are beginning to realize that the kill-willie save-janjan noise is a lynch-mob show of power that could should be used to fix government, fix the economy, fix the environment, fix education.   they’re just not up to it?   television’s dreadfulness is merely a reflection of filipino society’s larger dreadfulness, and it’s unfair to single out willie when everybody else in corridors of power are being as dreadful, if in more subtle, sometimes unthinking, ways.

in academe, i see that the plagiarist’s friends are very quiet, simply incapable, it would seem, of drawing a line between right and wrong — the friendship, the utang na loob, the samahan, are just too important.   instead they draw a line between friends and not-friends.   values of honesty and integrity can go hang.

lem garcellano puts it quite graphically:

…para lang kasong jan-jan yan. di ka ka-tropa, luto ka sa sarili mong mantika. hindi nila masikmurang i-crispy pata si Krip. kasi isalang mo ang isa, lahat sasagitisit sa isang kawa. (parang pagluluto ng bulig sa Bulacan, buhay pa ibubuhos lahat sa kawa ng kumukulong mantika tapos sasakluban. maririnig mo yung kasag ng dahandahang pagkamatay).  *let’s see them fry their own kind*

nah, this doesnt look like a social media lynch mob that would have the guts to lynch its own kind; the other kind, yes.   halatang halata in the krip case, because of the silence, and in the willie case, because of the hysteria.

the silence must be because they agree with krip’s lame excuse that since he had edited the work of joble considerably, kanya na yon?  i wish he or joble would show us the original and the edited so we can see the truth of that.   but even so,  the fact that he allowed the article to be published only with joble’s byline only means that he as editor gave up all rights to the material.   he can’t eat his cake (binayaran siya as editor) and have it, too (kanya pa rin ang artikulo as co-author).

as for the willie hysteria,  here’s a treat from james cordova, he whose profile pic is a pic of macario sakay.   a series of irreverent fb jabs at some leaders of the lynch mob.

@Momblogger, one of the noisiest anti-Willie Revillame bloggers who harassed advertisers into pulling out their ads from Willing Willie, admits that she doesn’t watch TV. And yet she judges its content? Is she on drugs or something. Hypocrites. 7:11 pm yesterday

At ikaw Emily Abrera, magtigil ka! You ran McCann-Erickson for years. Among your clients are the same advertisers who supported what you now denounce as TV game shows that dumb down Filipinos. Nakaupo ka lang sa CCP akala mo kung sino ka nang magsalita. Hypocrite! 7:15 pm yesterday

At ikaw John Silva, ikaw na hitad ka, wag kang magmalinis dahil, sa totoo lang, what you’re doing — seeking grants just for the sake of seeking grants and teaching others to do it — is pangraraket at panggagamit din ng ibang tao. Kung gusto niyo tulungan si Janjan, tulungan niyo lang. Wag niyo ng gamitin ang bata para lang mailabas nyo ang pagkamuhi niyo sa mga baduy na kagaya ni Willie Revillame. 7:27 pm yesterday

Ikaw naman Etta Rosales, grow some balls naman. Wag ka kaagad nagpapadala sa ingay ng ilang taong nag-aastang promoter and protector of good taste ng mga Pilipino. Dilawan ka na nga sa pulitika, dilawan ka pa rin sa isyu na to? Naknangtokwa ka.  7:32 pm yesterday

At ikaw Honey Carandang, una, palitan mo na palayaw mo. Kadiri pakinggan na Honey tawag sa isang may edad na na tulad mo. Pangalawa, ayusin mo naman yang practice mo. Wag kang pagamit sa ABS-CBN. Just because ikaw daw ang pinakasikat na child psychologist sa bansa e puede ka ng mag-diagnose sa isang bata without even talking to him first. (Regards kay Ricky.)  7:35 pm yesterday

At ikaw Dinky Soliman, ayusin mo trabaho mo. Sa kaso ni Janjan, saka lang kayo umaksyon nung nag-ingay na sa Internet, almost 2 weeks after the March 12 episode. Dapat March 13 pa lang, nagwala na kayo. E pinalampas niyo pa ilang araw. Ano hinintay niyo – matuyo ang highlights mo? Ang labas tuloy, ginawa niyo lang ito kasi may nag-ingay. E paano kung wala? (Lose the highlights, by the way. It affects your thinking.) 7:40 pm yesterday

plagiarism and, uh, krip yuson? is that you?

update 4 : Krip Yuson: A portrait of the Filipino as a plagiarist

update 3 : are we forgiving plagiarism?

update 2 : Ruins and monuments: A collective statement on the plagiarism of Krip Yuson

update 1 : plagiarism apology as can of worms

i sent the following two links to my brother butch after a conversation re editors & authors.   he doesn’t know krip personally but has heard me speak of him and he has seen krip’s books in bookstores and has even read an essay or two, i think.

Hall of Fame writer Krip Yuson plagiarizes for Rogue Magazine PBA article
Famed writer Krip Yuson apologizes for plagiarism

his response:

I read the Yuson blogs.
It’s a whole different world.
Brutal, cruel.

And his response, an amusing attempt at damage control.
Like he consulted a boardroom of colleagues and friends for advice and used everything that was tossed on his plate.

(1) I was pressed for time
(2) I wasn’t thinking right.
(3) I feel like a heel.
(4) I will just have to bear the blows.
(5) Thank you for reminding me of my responsibilities.
(6) Maybe, I’ve gotten old and jaded.
(7) Maybe I’m overworked.
(8) [Again]. . . Maybe the deadline pressure got to me [same as (1)]
(9) [I think there was also this] I think having edited it, I considered myself a co-author.

How about. . .
(10) I didn’t think I would get caught.
(11) Maybe, I was caught in a black hole of some extended reality.

All in all, a sorry ass attempt at damage control.

B.

persecuting willie

so i’ve just been called a pedophile on facebook because i protested against a poster of a goodlooking teenage boy in the briefest of white briefs in macho-dance pose.   says the poster:

WILLIE’S SUMMER DANCE STUDIO PRESENTS
MACHO DANCING FOR BOYS!

Learn to shake hips
& pick up customers
Parents can make up
to $1K a week
And it’s free!

A Corporate Social Responsibility Project of:
PROCTOR @ GAMBLE, JOLLIBEE, UNILEVER, PEPSODENT, VASELINE, OISHI, CDO, SURF DETERGENT, TECHNOMARINE, CAMELLA’S HOMES, LHUILLER AND OTHER OUTSTANDING COMPANIES WHO SPONSOR WILLIE’S DANCING CONTESTS FOR BOYS!

HURRY! CLASSES LIMITED! CALL MANNY PANGILINAN AT CHANNEL 5 TODAY. GUARANTEED CUSTOMERS FOR YOUR BOY AFTER CLASSES!

quite offended i commented that the poster was too too much!   totally unfair to willie and his sponsors!   that the 6 year old was the one who wanted to go on tv to show off his dance routine.   he had done it many times before elsewhere, even in school, and was rewarded and lauded for it.   that willie was just as surprised as everyone.   and that we’re imposing our sensibilities on the masa, sensibilities that they don’t share.   whats indecent to us may not be indecent to them.   that there’s clearly a class divide here.

and that’s when one of the commenters said i must be a pedophile, or a media executive, which at the moment daw are the same thing.   i’d cut and paste that comment except that it was deleted by the commenter soon after i replied: oh wow, this is not an intelligent conversation. signing off…   the downside of social media: having to deal with the whole spectrum, from the stupid, sometimes irrational, many times unthinking, to the intelligent and creative and occasionally sublime comments that any blog, tweet, or fb status is open to, especially when one is in a major major disagreement with a lynch mob, such as the kick-out-willie movement.

of course because it’s been sensationalized to the max, mainstream media are taking up what social media started.   the inquirer has it on the front page: Willie treatment of dancing boy ‘criminal’ says the broadsheet. Revillame treatment of dancing boy in tears criminal–CHR says the online version.

MANILA, Philippines—What the show “Willing Willie” did to Jan-Jan Suan, the 6-year-old boy who was told to simulate a striptease while in tears in exchange for cash in front of a cheering studio audience, was criminal, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said Tuesday.

The CHR said it would investigate the episode as it appeared to have violated a law protecting children.

“The commission will investigate this incident in order to identify the person/s liable and to recommend proper legal actions against them,” it said in a statement.

what’s scandalizing to me is the CHR’s, or is it the inquirer‘s? summary of the situation:  “the 6-year-old boy who was told to simulate a striptease while in tears in exchange for cash in front of a cheering studio audience…”

this makes it seem like willie told the boy, o sumayaw ka ng “striptease”, bibigyan kita ng pera.   when in fact it’s not the way it happened at all.   anyone who watches willing willie would know that the kid would have been given money, kahit ano pang isinayaw niya, lalo na with tears effect, which was not because he was feeling “humiliated.”   anyone who has taken the time to check out the story and really watch the youtube video en toto, and then watched the interviews of the boy and his parents in the following days, would know that it was the production staff’s responsibility, and that they had toned it down na nga, pinalitan nila yung music na dala ng bata, which was hayden kho’s “careless whisper”.

also, it was nothing close to a striptease.   there was no shedding of clothing or suggestion thereof.   does the CHR, or the inquirer, even know what macho dancing is like?   it’s no different from what little girls dancing like sex bomb dancers do.

karen cardenas reflects: …on The Dance and what we impose on it. He was fully dressed, he was making movements, he wasn’t provocative. What is the difference from ocho-ocho or for heaven’s sake, the grind or tahitian or dirty dancing or lambada? Kasi pang “macho dancer”? Bakit niyo minamaliit ang macho dancer? —facebook 29 march

of course the next question posed is: why didn’t willie stop it right away, after he had seen the macho-dancer routine.   why did he let it go on and on?   it was so inappropriate, so offensive, and what about the little boy, kawawa naman, umiiyak na nga, yada yada yada

willie tried to explain, everyone was having a good time, the father, the aunt, even the boy, who gamely danced everytime he heard his music instead of running away when he had 10k na in his pocket — i mean you know, if he was aware enough to feel oppressed by what he was doing, he would have been smart enough to get off that stage the moment he got the money, okay na, panalo na, but he didn’t.

everyone was having a good time.   the first time i saw it, natawa rin ako.   natawa ako sa bata, natawa ako kay willie, natawa ako sa audience.   of course i knew by then that there was an uproar over it in social media, so i was also thinking omg yes it’s the sort of thing na pagdidiskitahan ng opus deis and couples for christ and their ilk.   still i could relate to the laughter, what fun to break out of the norm, do something different, even, defy a sexual taboo, mwahaha!   and susmayorsep alam kaya ng batang ito kung sinong sumasayaw ng ganyan?   mwahahaha!   sana hindi!    mwahahaha!

read karen’s Willie, Humiliation

… when Willie makes jokes, is it to humiliate the contestants, to make them feel lowly, inferior, or is there a collective humility in all of them, an unspoken awareness that it’s open season. Laugh at me, make fun of me, because it’s just one big hilarious joke, everything we are doing here. It’s one big show, and it isn’t real.

Willie, from what i have heard, came from the same situation as his contestants. He was, as far as the stories go, also struggling in life before he became rich and famous. My guess is he, like his guests, understands self-deprecation, he knows what it is like to laugh at himself, at his situation.

Feeling humiliated may not be something they concern themselves with because their lives are hard enough, and if they can have a little fun in an arena meant for them, why not? Don’t Pinoys love to laugh, even at themselves?

and if we go even deeper, and attribute more intelligence to the masa, the poor, the lower class, i daresay the exploitation wasn’t one-way.   sure, the capitalists exploit the masa with this sort of show, but it is just as possible that the boy’s family had read into the system of the gameshow and thought:  this is the way to go, we do something different, we do something a little naughty, we make more money.   depende sa perspective.   which is only to say that there are no absolutes here, and willie does not deserve the wholesale villification and opprobrium.

it is so clear now how hated willie, hero of the masses, is by the know-it-all self-righteous self-proclaimed pundits of social media, led it would seem by fellow celebrities in the showbiz industry who just can’t stand being upstaged by a willie revillame na hindi naman guapo, walang ka-class-class, pero tumatabo on primetime tv and in opm CDs, laban kayo?

because hey, the masses love him, he’s one of them, just a little smarter and luckier, and i’m sure they love that he is medyo bastos, which is, wittingly or un-, an up-yours to the moralist establishment that is at the root of their poverty.

and speaking of bastos, sino ba talagang bastos.   di ba mas bastos yung nag-upload ng video of the little boy sa youtube?   di ba mas bastos ang nag-upload ng poster sa facebook, na natanggap ko rin sa email, for the sake of the little boy daw?   what kind of caring is that?

like katrina says of the offensive poster:

sinong bastos ngayon?
no really, lalabanan ninyo si Willie Revillame by doing this?
how crass. how un-intelligent. how irresponsible can you get.

merci & the senate

from newsbreak‘s glenda gloria: ‘Lp now a force to reckon with’

The overwhelming House vote for the impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez proves two things: that the ruling Liberal Party is now a real force to reckon with and that President Aquino has been able to exercise political command without trying too hard.

“The impeachment project was a consolidating project for the LP, and they succeeded,” said Earl Parreño, a veteran House watcher and former journalist who’s now with the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (Iper). “After this consolidation phase, they could push for their reform agenda and if they do it well, it could only be good for the country.”

The victory becomes sweeter because the Iglesia ni Cristo pushed hard—but failed—to support the Ombudsman, according to a political ally of the President.

At total of 212 members of the House of Representatives voted to impeach Gutierrez for betrayal of public trust (see how they voted). This is 30 votes less than the total members of the ruling coalition—250. President Aquino earlier made it clear to his partymates that he wanted the Ombudsman out since he considered her an obstacle to honest governance.

The INC reportedly managed to persuade some solons to vote no, abstain or not register their votes. Among the 4 who abstained are relatives of senator-judges: Cavite Rep. Lani Mercado, wife of Sen. Bong Revilla, and Las Pinas Rep. Mark Villar, son of Sen. Manuel Villar.

… A senior government official close to the President told Newsbreak that they had about 4 estimates of how the voting would go—anywhere from 140 to 160 to close to 200, but never 200 or more. In the early headcount phase, the President even said he’d be content with just the 94 votes, according to this source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

i was surprised when gma showed up, looking rather woebegone.   was her one vote perceived to be so important as to make a difference, be a tipping point maybe?   when in fact wala pala silang kalaban-laban?   i bet she regretted coming.    manny pacquiao who stayed away but voted via twitter was way smarter.   even if he got heckled online for his no vote, and of course his weird, and graceless, retort to why he was absent, serves him right.

so now, all eyes on the senate.   manila standard‘s emil jurado predicts that merci will be acquitted.

Will the Senate convict Gutierrez? There are serious doubts. Senator Francis Escudero, an Aquino ally, says that no less than 16 senators are needed to convict Gutierrez, and at least seven to acquit her.

Out of the 24 senators, two are not present. Senator Panfilo Lacson is still a fugitive from justice. Former Senator Noynoy Aquino has risen to the presidency. But it is clear that the Senate needs a two-thirds vote in order to convict an official.

Who might be the seven senators to decide in Gutierrez’s favor. They are Senators Lito Lapid and Bong Revilla, known to be former President Arroyo’s allies; the minority in the opposition composed of Nacionalista Party senators, like Manny Villar, Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Bongbong Marcos, and Loren Legarda. That’s already seven. Others who will also likely join them are Senators Joker Arroyo, Miguel Zubiri and Miriam Santiago. That brings the total to 10 senators in favor of Gutierrez.

Thus, my gulay, it’s unlikely that Gutierrez will be convicted. Her acquittal will be a slap on President Aquino, he who does not hide his obsession to run after his predecessor and prosecute her with a “friendlier” Ombudsman.

hmm.   read raul pangalangan‘s Gutierrez impeachment prospects in the Senate and tony la vina‘s Impeachment as a lesson in civics.   the senate would be wise to give the prosecutors of the lower house, and not the impeached ombudsman, the benefit of the doubt.   senators who acquit do so at their own peril.