gloria & glorietta

what a coincidence, really impossible to ignore. the arroyo administration can deny it to death, and she may even be telling the truth this time, but there’s no stopping people from thinking/seeing a connection between the bribery blues ni gloria and the bomba-like explosion sa glorietta.

it’s an intuitive thing, a right brain operation, this sense of a meaningful relationship between apparently unconnected events when they occur simultaneously or in close sequence over a certain period of time. the mystic scientist carl jung called it synchronicity, which “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance” and which is the very principle underlying the use of the i ching and astrology (among other occult arts) in making sense of “the essential situation prevailing” for any one  person or group at any moment in time.

and so the essential situation prevailing for gloria is frankly explosive, as explosive as glorietta that afternoon of oct. 19.

take note that the makati business club, heretofore super-supportive of gloria’s free-market policies, has made an about-face. executive director alberto lim was the first to go on anc soon after the blast to wonder aloud if it were a malacanang tactic to distract us from the bribery scandal, and if not, to ask that gma clear her name, clear the air, by appointing an independent commission to investigate the crime. a demand that has since been echoed by the bishops and civil society, for both the palace payola and the glorietta explosion.

unfortunately gloria does not see fit to oblige her critics. which is no way to defuse a ticking bomb, or a deadly explosion, as the case may be.

of med schools & sluts

O.A. na talaga the howl over the desperate housewife’s dig at diplomas of philippine med schools. besides the class action suit to be filed by filipino doctors in the u.s. against producers abc/walt disney, a second lawsuit is being planned daw with philippine-based lawyers representing the medical schools. “there was blatant defamation, not only against filipino doctors but also against philippine medical schools,” sey ni california-based ted laguatan to inquirer yesterday.

naku, ha. sana pag-isip-isipan muna nila. baka in the end, mapahiya lang tayo lalo. sey ni former doh secretary dr. alberto “quasi” romualdez jr. in his malaya column:

“The unfortunate fact is that the line had some basis in the true situation of Philippine medical education today. Since the early 90s, when a misguided secretary of education deregulated medical schools in the belief that market forces would determine the quality and quantity of the physician education in this country, medical schools have proliferated in this country – from the original seven in the 80s to more than 40 today.

“The results are reflected in the dismal passing rates of most new schools in the medical board examinations. Appropriately trained teachers in both basic and clinical sciences are now in short supply. In addition, clinical training facilities in the form of academically oriented tertiary medical hospitals are sorely lacking.

“Moreover, as a consequence of poor quality pre-medical education in the country, the number of qualified applicants to medical schools has dropped down considerably. For this reason, most of the new schools have directed their marketing efforts to attracting overseas students who have problems getting into medical schools in their home countries.

“In the past, this need for placement in foreign medical schools was filled by institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today much of that need is served by the excess medical colleges in the Philippines. This is why TV jokes now refer to ‘Philippine med schools’ instead of Caribbean or Latin American.”

as for the ‘slut’ swipe, i actually caught that jon stewart segment asking if america was ready for a woman president, cut to other countries’ women presidents, and i was expecting to see gloria dissed, not cory, so natawa ako, si cory pa, at slut daw, haha, she and her other daughters don’t even know the meaning of the word, sey ni inkredibol kris.

but check out dean jorge bocobo’s aren’t all filipinas sluts anyway? where he takes to task inquirer‘s “quintessential writer on philippine women’s issues” rina jimenez david for making light of a slur rooted in “the old stereotype brought home by American servicemen who had the best sex they ever had in places like Clark and Subic that all Filipinas are sluts, wonderful sluts!”

oo nga. ayaw ni nicole ng ganyan.

martin & pops – the best revenge

when i heard martin nievera on the buzz last sunday, i just had to read pops’ tell-all interview in yes magazine that drove the man to tears.

i also googled it, anong reaction ng fans, and the overwhelming sentiment is against martin and the significant other. they think pops did right to finally speak up and tell her side, reveal the pain.

hmm. ito ba yung schadenfreude, ‘pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune’? we’re just happy that they’re all still miserable?

i think pops has been too sensitive about the “monkey” business. i’m not convinced it was derogatory, maybe because i remember calling my kids monkeys too when they were in that young and irrepressible monkey-see-monkey-do stage. besides monkeys can be cute.

sana tinantanan na lang sila ng media. or sana she just killed the story outright, gave katrina the benefit of the doubt. puwede namang hindi patulan, if only for the sake of the kids. this can’t be good for them.

of course i realize that it was a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back kind of thing, patong-patong na ang atraso ni martin, time to get even by revealing all and getting public sympathy on her side. pa-martir effect, kumbaga.

but there are other ways of getting even. ika nga, “you don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” which is a warning “not to act out of pique or pursue revenge in such a way as to damage yourself more than (or as much as) the object of your anger.”

because martin is right. with that unexpurgated telling of the martin & pops soap opera behind-the-scenes, pops has killed their best seller of a concert loveteam that had survived the broken marriage and continued to thrill and and titillate pinoys worldwide.

check out reviews (MARTIN & POPS -the magic lives on) of their hugely successful concert at the mohegan sun arena, connecticut just last year. beauteous pops teasing martin, “nagsisisi ka na ba?” and the audience lapping it up. i thought that was the best revenge.

media missing “the big picture”

so what was so big about the picture ricky carandang painted when he and his fellow media practitioners vergel santos, john nery, and juliet javellana talked about nothing but their small elitist corner of media where confidentiality between journalist and his/her sources is higher even than the national interest. newsstand.blogs.com even has the nerve to recap: “The journalistic privilege is indispensable to the free flow of information.”

oh please! free flow? you call that free? more like restricted, selective, problematic than free. in my book, the lowest kind of information.

i think jarius did the right thing. but it wasn’t the pros and cons of what he did that merited a whole show. it was what he said, the info he offered, added to info that emerged in the senatehearings, that media should be looking into. isip-isip naman, mga bata.

the question is no longer whether gma and/or the first gentleman were part of the fix — that’s already obvious, di ba, as obvious as her voice on the garci tapes. the question that media, and the senate, should be gnawing to the bone, instead of avoiding, if they are truly in the service of all filipinos, and not just of their publishers/networks and advertisers/sponsors and campaign contributors, is: do we really need a national broadband network?

because the answer is yes, never mind muna about the last mile chuchu. not only the government bureaucracy but we the people who already use cellphones and the internet but who find pldt and globe rather expensive as service providers would have a cheaper alternative in a national broadband network that’s run not for profit but for public service, lalo na kung di naman tayo pasosyal o tight ang ating budget at mababaw naman ang kaligayahan natin.

this is why pldt and globe are so against nbn in any kind of reincarnation, and ito na rin ang “razon” kung bakit pilit na sumasawsaw ang tycoons sa isang public service project. and so naghalo na ang balat sa tinalupan, kumbaga.

read manila times’ a backbone-breaking straw by benjamin g. defensor.