Friday, September 26, 2008
Yap: Belarus cake, 1
By Januar E. Yap
Meanwhile
LOOK, I’m sorry I even mentioned Frankenstein when what I meant was his chop-chop monster,” I said.
“We understand, sir. It’s one of those days,” one of them said.
“The rest of you, of course, know that Frankenstein was the crazy doctor. Good thing I can clear that out here today. The monkey’s at least off my back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So now we go to talking about a snippet of our President speaking before the UN assembly. I think we should go into the business of ghostwriting speeches for heads of state. I mean, you know, the outsourcing thing.”
“You’re crazy, sir.”
“I’m serious. You listen to our presidents’ state addresses, and you think we’re the greatest country in the world.”
“I read some of the speeches in Manolo Quezon’s “Speeches That Shook a Nation, sir,” another student said.
“How did it go?”
“Well, sir. I like Conrado de Quiros’ speech. That anecdote on Rizal on a ship of fools.”
“Okay, what about it?”
“Rizal was pretty good, I mean conversant on the upper deck where he finds himself in a multinational clique of Germans,
French, Spanish, and I think a Palestinian.”
“There was an Israeli, too, but I think at the last part you fell off your seat dozing off. Go on.”
“Well, okay, after a while, our hyperactive hero goes to the lower deck where he finds smelly Indios, Cebuanos, Warays, Ilonggos, Maranaos, etc. And you know what, he couldn’t talk in any of their languages. Our national hero, sir, can’t speak Cebuano.”
“Your books say he was a linguist.”
“Yes, but excluding our own languages, sir.”
“Is that true?”
“Well, according to this anecdote, sir. But I think what De Quiros was trying to arrive at was an allegory saying that our educated elite these days can’t talk to the masses.”
“That’s always the case since God invented the human brain. Some are simply custom-built for plowing, the others for figuring out the universe. Really, I’m joking. But you’re right, that’s why politicians hire the Boyoyoy clowns in the heat of the campaign season. These mascots can convey the serious content in charter change, federalism, the Mindanao conflict, oil deregulation, minimum wage, inflation, by hanging on a trapeze and show their butts. ”
“Quite a stunt, sir.”
“Yes, although occasionally, we have Loren Legarda doing a wild grind or Manny Villar singing Frank Sinatra. I like Juan Flavier. He’d say ‘Isusumbong ko kayo sa Nanay ko ‘pag hindi nyo ako binoto.’ And he’d show you a shrunk shirt with an ‘I love Flavier’ print.”
“The barrio doctor is quite a guy, sir.”
“I agree. He sold a 23-point health department agenda with a mere slogan when he was secretary,” I said. “He addressed the problem of shortage of doctors in the barrios by sending single doctors there while the LGUs prepared potential wives to match. It works, the doctors fall in love and stay in the towns for good. Good spin, right?”
“Flirtation as a state policy, sir?”
“Good one. This week is press freedom week.”
“What are we supposed to do, sir?”
“Most of all, keep reading. And I particularly like that part about objectivity with conviction.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
“You know pretty much that facts, as they are, tell something. In the best order, they teach you something.”
“Sir, is it dangerous work?”
“A White House statement this year on America’s version of the press freedom never mentioned the Philippines. Instead, it mentioned Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria. Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Vietnam.
Beijing, it says, is the country’s top jailer of journalists.”
“But journalists are being killed here.”
“That’s why we talk about it, specifically on a week like this. Bring it to the fore for examination. It’s a work in progress, like feminism, at least in a civilized society.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 26, 2008 issue)
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