This is my Manila Standard column last December 15, 2008.

There are those who see the Internet as the world’s biggest library—the source of all kinds of information from the truly significant to the most inconsequential.

There are those who see it as a trash box, the repository of filth and many things wicked and unspeakable, though not necessarily repulsive.

Others see the Internet as a virtual confessional—people who religiously log on to the Internet to share with the rest of the world the state of their mental or emotional states.

They use blogs as some kind of an online diary.

Finally, there are people who use the Internet as a pulpit—they are the people who regularly trawl the blogosphere in search of something, anything that grabs their interest. They leave commentary here and there, pick fights with others, engage in healthy or acrimonious debate, etc.

You put all these people together and you have a really potent brew.

And because the Internet and everything that is there is readily available to anyone 24/7 and the blogosphere happens to be world’s best example of a networked community, controversial issues do spread quickly and easily like wildfire.

The current sensation—or victim, depending on where one’s affections lie— of the Internet and the blogosphere is a female college senior from Ateneo de Manila University.

She attended one of those weekend immersion programs which required that she live with an Aeta family. When she got back to civilization, she decided to write about her experience in her Facebook site. Her piece was posted exclusively for her contacts (only those in her list of friends would be able to read it). But someone among her contacts picked up the post and sent it to the rest of the world.

Quite unfortunately for this college senior, the particular post infuriated far too many people. Many found her post racist and shocking in its unflinching declarations of abhorrence for the Aetas she lived with for a weekend and the conditions she had to put up with. In a statement that she supposedly sent to another blogger, she tried to justify her post as “dark quirky humor” that she said her friends normally found “comical.”

As can be expected in a medium that thrives on exchange of ideas, lots of people weighed in with their own opinions. That particular post got passed around and around. Her subsequent clarification was ripped apart as an attempt to obfuscate the issue—she thought betrayal of the friend who forwarded the post to the world was the major issue at stake. There were those who didn’t mince words and called her a major embarrassment to her parents and to the Ateneo.
Quite a number were likewise livid and called her names.

Although there are those who have come to her rescue and tried to provide some context to the issue, the kind of commentary that’s out there is hardly the kind one would like to preserve in a scrapbook.

As someone who has been through the whole experience (for the uninitiated, I had my own 10 minutes of fame—or notoriety, depending again on where one’s affections lie—a couple of years back through an open letter that I wrote for my blog and which got forwarded to the rest of the world), I know too well how frustrating it is not to be given the benefit of the doubt.

One of the things that truly amazes me is the extent to which lots of people out there presume to already know what kind of a person one is, what is going through one’s mind, and what one’s motivations are on the basis of one write up.

I maintain that it is never fair to make generalizations about people based on scanty information.
This does not mean one can’t put someone to task for saying atrocious things about others; but I just don’t see how calling a person names, judging her person, her family, and Ateneo, and ascribing all kinds of sinister motivations on her is any better.

Of course she is a brat and her unabashed declarations of “how kadiri these people are” deserve to be met with indignation. But should we condemn her and urge that she be burned at the stake?

This explains why I will not publish names here. She’s young, and I think she still has a lot to learn. Hopefully, she does learn from this experience. But if you are interested to know the details of this controversy, they are quite easy to find in the Net.

There are, however, a number of issues that I feel deserve to be discussed in the aftermath of this particular issue in addition to our collective penchant for making judgments about other people so quickly and so vociferously.

As a teacher to college students, I am aware that one of the characteristics of the members of the younger generation is the tendency to blur the lines between what is private and public and I’m not just talking about public display of affection here. The whole controversy started because the student published her prejudices and rants.

Not many among us understand, or even care to understand the phenomenon; and certainly, very few among us acknowledge that they do so because there are just too many opportunities laid out that enable them to do so in the first place. Examples of these are the many social networking sites and technological gadgets at their disposal.

This makes me sound ancient, but in my time, diaries were kept under lock and key, and intimate details about one’s life was not something one could splash across a public forum. The status of one’s relationship was not something that defined who one was—so unlike today where one’s status (take your pick—single, in a relationship, it’s complicated) ranks high up there in one’s friendster account than say, one’s educational background or hobbies. One’s opinion about other people was something one kept hush-hush and limited to one’s gossip circle.

So once again, we’re in a situation where those among us who are older are reduced to shaking our heads and heaving a sigh at the antics of the young, oblivious to the fact that we are just as responsible for the very things that we seem to object to.

This is my Manila Standard column last December 12, 2008.

I received a number of e-mails in response to my column last Monday, which was about the Pacquiao victory, the whole phenomenon of which was described by reader Ed Reyes as “over-the-top media circus.” He was referring to the way media went to town with Manny Pacquiao’s victory over Oscar de la Hoya last Sunday. I have news for Mr. Reyes: Expect the hoopla to reach even more frenzied levels today when Pacquiao gets home.

All the dailies bannered the Pacquiao victory Monday morning, although not all went the way of the Philippine Daily Inquirer which allocated almost half of its front page to a glory shot of the Filipino boxer and a second coming banner “IT’S CHRISTMAS DAY,” yes, all in upper case letters. What can I say occasions for national celebration and jubilation, not to mention events that can be sensationalized, have become so very rare lately; not that it justifies the way media seems to be doing cartwheels over the whole thing. The most minute details about the victory and every possible sidebar to the story have probably already been poked at, examined, and written about.

But was the supposed Dream Match really what it was bruited to be or were we all simply taken for a ride by media hype? This essentially was the gist of my reader’s beef. He is of the opinion that De la Hoya’s supposed invincibility was media creation designed to raise more excitement and anticipation for the event, giving it a David vs. Goliath storyline. I’m not a boxing expert, so I feel am not qualified to offer insights on the real state of De la Hoya’s boxing prowess.
But I do agree that the level of media attention being heaped on the victory has reached absurd heights. Media camped out in the Pacquiao residences in San Pedro and in General Santos City as well as in the residences of his siblings and parents. Microphones and cameras were shoved into the faces of Pacquiao’s relatives including his very young children. If Pacquiao’s dog can talk, I am sure media would have interviewed it too, not that the dog needs any more publicity.

Someone who requested that her name be kept anonymous should I decide to publish her e-mail wrote in to comment on something that the media has made a regular sidebar story every time Pacquaio goes up the ring: The rituals that his mother inevitably stages. My reader’s gripe: The exploitative way in which media “plays up her frailties.” I’m guessing my reader is being nice rather than naughty here although she did ask if the mother also displays the same piousness when her other boxer son (the one that probably needs more divine intercession) goes up the ring.

I’m a little ambivalent about where I stand on this matter. Okay, so Pacquiao’s mother never fails to deliver the required serving of typical Pinoy melodrama when her favorite son goes up the ring. Her behaviors may strike many as overdramatic, perhaps even a tad too theatrical for comfort; but then again who can say that she doesn’t remind us of our own mothers? I also cringed in embarrassment while watching her wail and flail around mainly because I half suspect that my own mother would probably do the same if a television camera were to follow her around. My friends and I have this running joke: We try to steer clear of situations that might land us in the papers for fear that media will find a way to get our mothers to do their thing on national television.

Most of the e-mails I received were, expectedly, rants about the heavy advertisement load of the television broadcast of the match. A certain Lemuel Que e-mailed to seethe about what he calls “blatant display of greed” of television networks. Below are portions of his e-mail:
“Aren’t there rules that govern how much advertisement load is allowed during the broadcast of events of blockbuster events? I noticed that our television stations always put too many advertisements during these events. Don’t our television stations know that it is very annoying and frustrating on the part of the Filipino audience? Instead of patronizing the products, I think the ads produce the opposite effect.”

I empathize with Que. It was a good thing the results of the match were already widely known thus making the ordeal of having to sit through interminably long commercial breaks a little less vexing. But there were still times when I felt like giving up, or worse, throwing something at the television set. Not only were the commercial breaks very long, there were also commercials to announce the commercial breaks and even more commercials to signal the end of the break and the resumption of the broadcast. A voice over would announce that the break was courtesy of a list of products. And then before resumption of the broadcast, a voice over would again intone that the broadcast was being brought to us— more like being hammered on us—by yet another long list of products. I already wrote last Monday about the fact that about a third of the television screen was also taken up by advertisements all throughout the fight.

I asked my officemates what they did to cope with the long advertisements and they said they took the opportunity to do some chores. In other words, they tuned off when the ads came on. This is hardly what advertisers paid for.

A friend of mine wanted me to publish his suggestion to our television networks: “Instead of loading up highly popular broadcasts such as Pacquiao’s fights with copious amounts of advertisements, perhaps our television networks can accommodate only a few advertisers but charge them triple the rates. In this way, the burden is not passed on to hapless viewers who will probably have more appreciation for the ads and will have better reception of the products.” I completely agree.

And finally, an e-mail from reader Andrew Tan offered this profound observation about the fight:

“Many young Filipinos will now aspire to become the next Manny ‘Pacman’ Pacquiao and for the wrong reasons. He will be idolized and many of our youth will try to follow in his footsteps because he is now a multi-millionaire (billionaire is more like it). I fervently hope people will not forget the extreme sacrifice and the risks that boxers like Manny Pacquiao invest in every fight. Boxing is still the cruelest sport in our planet. The damage done to a boxer’s health is irreversible and inevitable. All boxers in the long run succumb to neurological problems shown by the same symptoms such as addled speech, boxer’s shuffle (i.e., inability to walk straight and to drag their feet). Case in point: Mohammad Ali, Rolando Navarrete, etc. The price they pay is really high.”

This is my Manila Standard column last December 8, 2008.

When the broadcast of the much-ballyhooed dream match was finally started on GMA-7 at 1:05 p.m., most Filipinos tuned in to the boob tube no longer in excited anticipation of finding out the outcome of the fight. The result of the match was already all over the Internet and was already being passed on from one cell phone to another through SMS.

And as if to spite GMA-7 which bagged the exclusive rights to broadcast the fight, ABS-CBN pulled the rug under by announcing the results through a streaming advisory that accompanied its regular programming.

There are of course those who think that awareness of the outcome already diminishes the value of the viewing experience; they are the people who hate spoilers. There’s certainly less anticipation and excitement when one already knows how something is going to end. But I’m sure that when it comes to things where national pride and honor seem at stake, being aware of the outcome also brings a new dimension into the viewing experience. My friends and I watched the fight with a little less excitement, but with more confidence and yes, a lot less apprehension.

So most of us watched the match to find out how it happened. We watched to witness personally how Pacquiao overcame all the odds stacked against him. In the run up to the fight, he was the underdog. He was clearly physically inferior although he was probably hungrier and more determined. After all, he was carrying into the ring not only his personal hopes and dreams but those of millions of Filipinos as well. I am sure that all the newspapers will report comprehensive and blow-by-blow accounts of Pacquiao’s victory, so I won’t go there.

But something has to be said about the way the television broadcast of the fight was inordinately delayed and extraordinarily stretched out by GMA-7. This is nothing new of course. Our media networks’ shamelessness in this area is unparalleled.

Because they had exclusive rights to the broadcast and most Filipinos did not have alternatives anyway (the rich forked out large sums to watch the fight on real-time basis through pay-per-view or by trooping to moviehouses that had special arrangements to broadcast the fight real-time), they inundated the broadcast with commercials to the point that the commercial gaps became longer than the actual fight. Whatever happened to the regulatory requirement that prescribed the ratio of ads vis-à-vis the actual program?

And as if the lonnnnggggggg commercials were not enough aggravation, we all had to contend with watching the fight from a severely diminished television screen. The actual size of one’s television screen didn’t really matter anymore because they appropriated practically a third of the screen to product logos and ad placements. These do not include the product logos that were on the ring, on the boxers’ bodies, and prominently displayed all over the venue. I’ve never seen such variety and quantity of products displayed in one fight: From car batteries, cough medicines and muscle relaxants, deodorants, glue, door-to-door delivery services, cell phone service providers, airlines, softdrinks and beer, candies, coffee, liquor, t-shirt brands, paint to vitamins. Interestingly, shampoo, soap, and feminine products such as sanitary napkins and feminine wash were not part of them. This tells us a lot about the target demographics of the viewers.

I’ve written many times in the past about my objections to the way professional boxing is being staged today. One of them is precisely the shameless way in which these boxing matches are packaged and commercialized, even sensationalized.

Boxing matches have become less of a sports event than a commercial spectacle with lots and lots of money at stake. It has become a promoter’s event. And all these were painfully evident yesterday during the De la Hoya and Pacquiao fight. The boxing seemed only incidental in the whole scheme of things. What seemed more prominent were national honor and pride, millions of dollars (hundreds of millions of pesos!) at stake, and a lot of other commercial considerations.

Why, even the singing of the respective national anthems was not given the appropriate respect with people wildly cheering and the boxers oblivious to the anthems. In the GMA-7 broadcast, the singing of the Star Spangled Banner was interrupted by a phone interview of Manny Pacquiao. Of course it can be argued that the Americans don’t seem as sensitive about these things as we are anyway—the recording artist who sang the anthem even sang it as a stylized pop song, with hand on hip and a slouched body. On the other hand, our own Karylle even donned a fully beaded terno to sing Lupang Hinirang with as much ceremony and reverence as she possibly could—although quite frankly, it was a rendition that sounded like she was singing a love song.

It was a good thing that we already knew what the outcome was so all the aggravations were less annoying. Pacquio won anyway. I still have major objections about the way boxing is being promoted and conducted as a sport. But if there are some things that I hope would come out of the recent Pacquio victory, these would be more respect for our athletes and of course national pride.

There really should be no doubt that Emmanuel Pacquiao is a great athlete and sportsman. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the man is a very intelligent person. Kinesthetic intelligence is already a recognized form of intelligence in the world today.

Most people probably just saw the flurry of punches—the jabs, the hooks, and the undercuts that were exchanged between Oscar de la Hoya and our own Pacman—but there was clearly a lot of thinking processes that went with each punch.

In the same light, most people would only see a basketball player jump for a ball or a tennis player run to hit a ball with a racket. But in those split seconds, the kind of mental calculations that happen in the athlete’s mind is enormous: How high do I jump, what should I do with the ball, where do I land, how do I anticipate my opponent’s actions, etc, etc. All we see is the athlete doing his thing—the boxer dealing his opponent a fatal blow, the basketball player successfully catching the ball on rebound, the tennis player returning a ball with a backhand flourish.

It’s important to stress these and to highlight the fact that boxing is a sport that requires more than physical stamina and certainly much more than luck. Boxing is also largely a mental sport although of course not many among would deign to think of sports—boxing most specially—as activities that require the use of grey matter. All these were made clearly evident in the way Pacquiao overcame his physical disadvantage in height and reach by turning the match into a mental game. Clearly, Pacquio won because he was the more analytical boxer in that ring.

Again, so much will be said about what Pacquiao’s victory means to the nation. Someone made the observation that what makes Pacquiao unique as a boxer is that he carries with him into the ring the dreams and aspirations of a country. He has, time and again, tried to turn his boxing matches into occasions for national pride and celebration. He has time and again expressed the hope that his victories would serve to unite the nation. He has done it again. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to heed his call.