Careless Videos And Careless Quips

An offshoot of this whole Hayden Kho/Katrina Halili and company video scandal is the resurgence in airplay of Wham!’s “Careless Whisper.” Just last night while flipping through FM radio stations, I heard the song twice within the hour—and it’s not even Friday Madness. And this morning at the gym, a dance remake was playing on the PA system. Whether it’s a welcome offshoot depends on whether you love the song, you’re still in love with anything 80s, or you’re Andrew Ridgeley, in which case you’ll be thankful for the resurgence of any Wham! song, for the royalties. But aside from that song, everything else about the scandal hits all the wrong notes.

Take for instance the protest from a particular Philippine “junior” senator who took time out to make a privilege speech in the senate to berate the ex-boyfriend of Belo. “The actor-politician said the videos were disgusting and said Kho must be insane for collecting sex videos,” according to the abs-cbnnews.com post.

Hmmm. Funny how a single doctor gets berated for having sex with other single and available ladies by an actor-politician who not only had sex with other women during his marriage, but also sired children from the said women.

Okay, okay, so that’s not really the senator’s point. To be fair, it seems like the senator is condemning the doctor for videotaping the sex act without his partners’ consent, not having sex with different women per se (I guess that leaves the senator room to continue having fun outside the marital bed). “Noong nakita ko ito ay nanginig ang laman ko at hindi ko matanggap na ganoon na lang niya binababoy itong mga kababaihan. Kawawa naman. Naawa ako sa mga nabiktima niya. Kaya we should put a stop on this,” the senator said. (Oh dear senator, it’s “put a stop to this” not “put a stop on this.” Do you want to become a ultimate senator?)

And what’s with this particular senator these days? Prior to this, he also protested against Alec Baldwin’s joke on The David Letterman Show that he was looking for a Filipina mail-order bride. Well, actually Alec said he was looking for a Filipina or a Russian mail-order bride.

So how come Filipinos are up in arms over what, to me, is an obvious joke? Have we lost our sense of humor? I don’t hear the Russians complaining (then again, the USSR has disintegrated, so maybe they’re not sure who among them Alec Baldwin was referring to). Or maybe our national sense of humor dictates that we only allow fellow Filipinos to make fun of ourselves; however, if a foreigner makes fun of us, we turn all onion-skinned and oh-so-touchy.

Whenever a foreigner generalizes us as the land of mail-order brides, servants and doctors with fake diplomas, are we ashamed that they actually see our bad side? Is that the same national embarrassment that drove then-First Lady Imelda Marcos to erect temporary walls to block the sight of squatter areas in an attempt to whitewash the seedier side of Manila from visiting foreigners? Is that the same shame that drives us to allow guests to only see the clean kitchen and hide the dirty kitchen from them?

The same senator said that Baldwin’s comment was “insensitive and uncalled for” and that the actor is “arrogant” and ignorant of Philippines laws. He then threatened Alec Baldwin not to come to the Philippines, or else. “Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem,” the senator said, and even implied that he will personally beat Baldwin up. Now that’s an embarrassing, insensitive, uncalled for, and frankly quite arrogant statement, one that is unbecoming for a senator.

Oh wait—next year is the elections! Oh yes, now I understand. It’s called posturing.