Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Obenieta: Slant light of Lent By Myke U. Obenieta So to speak
NOT only from the Bible can one hear God, but also in the pages of a comic mag. Amen, quipped one journalist in praise of the phenomenal American humor publication: “All I really need to know I learned from MAD magazine.”
Bless its goofy prophet Alfred E. Neuman, always gracing the cover with his gap-toothed grin, for voicing out an article of faith for its readers: “What, me worry?”
“For the smarter kids of two generations, MAD was a revelation,” lauds a testimony from an essay in “The Humanist.” “It was the first to tell us that the toys we were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our leaders were fools, our religious counselors were hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about damn near everything.”
There’s nothing more off the cuff than the condescending agony of adults. How we shake the wrinkles off our foreheads at the grossness of being greenhorn. Yikes, youth!
No wonder a beauty queen now becoming the toast of YouTube can only blame her young age when she, standing in the spotlight, put her foot in her mouth. (“Um, sorry guys…because this was really my first pageant ever…Because I’m only 17 years old…”).
True, there’s more for Janina San Miguel to invoke the archangel as a bodyguard considering a legion of threats arrayed against inexperience and ignorance. In America, for instance, health officials could have crossed themselves in the wake of their finding: At least one in four teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease.
But age is no assurance of wisdom either if you’d ask the dethroned governor of New York who might as well have covered his face with an underwear after the unmasking of his involvement with a prostitution ring.
“Teenagers are people who act like babies if they’re not treated like adults.” With such words, the freaky MAD cover boy might as well have spoken from the pulpit.
Or, to paraphrase the reminder of Cebu’s prelate during his recent Palm Sunday homily, the age of innocence can be a bellwether of malevolence. “If we are not careful, if the youth are misguided, they can cause terrible upheaval in the country,” Cardinal Vidal intoned. To his juvenile listeners, he added: “As young citizens, it is also possible that you can contribute your knowledge to the solution of the nation’s problems, which are created by adults…You still have young minds and feelings. Yet it is possible and even better that you will express them.”
Never mind if you got only Janina’s elocution skills and could kill anyone with laughter. Don’t worry, rumor has it: God has a sense of humor.
