Verbalizing lapses in the brain

If there is someone I wouldn’t want to be right now, that would be Willie Revillame.  He has a record of making controversies and escaping them within a hairline.  But will he escape this massive petition to take him off air this time? The “passive” viewers who couldn’t care less what monkey dance he does in his show have now taken an interest to oust him in his new “home”.

I tried to understand the logic of his actions.  I am not a TV person but I am not ignorant to it either.  I saw him joke around noontime shows for a significant number of times during my college days.  I laughed at his slapsticks, but one thing is for sure, I’d rather be scrubbing floors than be paid money to become his object of ridicule that he calls “jokes”.  It was insultive, he was beseeching insinuating innuendos, and while it makes other people laugh, deep down inside, you are not sure if you are laughing because its funny, or you are laughing because you are silently relieved that you are in your home, safely watching him on television– too far away to be on his little spotlight.

But do you know how I see him?
I see him as a very lonely man with a poor concept of what happiness really is.  Look at his job, listen to his jokes, feel how hungrily he tries to create relationships with his contestants but cannot cross the barrier of his own isolation.  With failed marriages, broken relationships, suspensions — can you not see a pattern of someone desperately trying to find himself in whatever he can hang on to? — which in his case, not very much.

In the image he projects, can you imagine him quietly taking the dog out for a walk?
NO. Walking the dog is too mediocre.
He craves an interesting life.
And unfortunately, an interesting life is seldom a happy one.

He seems like a man of sudden impulsive decisions.  But really, he is not a decisive man at all.  For years, he has tied himself to the same concept of doling out to the poor, making instant millionaires, exuding a certain scruffiness that his position as a noontine host can afford–or cannot afford.

What am I trying to say?
The poor man, in his effort to find meaningful relationships with his work, friends, and everyone, has managed to ruin himself and other people in the process.

Didn’t he just leave a network for a new one, burned bridges with old friends, and now in a hot seat for having a boy dance inappropriately while he chides in the background on national television?
A lot of people have raised their voices against it.  If I was him, I wouldn’t know how to defend myself.  It was blatantly a mistake, a wrong decision…It seemed so right at the moment…how can you defend that? The only thing the poor guy can do is sincerely apologize.

The issue with the kid is not about whether it’s child abuse or not.  It ceases to become a question along the way.  That issue has apparently morphed from a simple child’s rights violation to a realistic depiction of how poor we understand the poor.

Can you truly understand something you are not experiencing?  Of course, we sympathize, but unless we starve, we do not know what hunger really is all about.

It was a cultural manifestation of how we assume certain hypocrisy and how separate we are from certain realities.  A child grinding like a macho dancer is neither wrong nor right.  It is just a reality too harsh for us to swallow.

Child prostitution and child abuse, is very real and we could engage on an intellectual battle as to how the kid dancing in Willing Willie a national issue, but that would take too much space, too much time, too much effort.
We have our lives to live, our coffee to drink, our families to love, our parties to attend, friends to socialize with, and books to read.

And we could engage ourselves in this issue… do something about it– maybe when we garner the time.
Maybe after the family picnic, after our meeting, after our children’s rehearsals…

For the meantime, let the bloggers blog about these outrageous happenings, let the critics castigate Willie Revillame, let the MTRCB investigate…

All this riot over the host, the TV Network, did anybody, just anybody, ask the boy what he needs?
Did anyone take time to make sure children, aside from their own, are well fed, well educated, and kept safe during the night?
Ahh, but these are too complicated!
We don’t want to press our noses into other people’s lives, now do we?

Maybe that is the reason why such a blunder happened.
Willie thought it was ok, some thought of it as funny, the kid is not our kid anyway.
Sure it’s pitiful, we thought for a fleeting moment….but the existence of these people! does not even touch the fringes of our lives…and we couldn’t care less…until something serious happens.

And it happened.  And it is still happening.  Some just do not have the privileges of a TV Network.

That boy, did you think he learned how to dance that on the spot?
of course not.
Think.
He would have to practice.
In his own home, with his aunt or relatives egging him on.
Probably these adults are laughing and thinking it is too good and just right for the show.
It will surely deliver a laugh.  It will be great.
Willie will be happy.  That would be worth Php10,000 bonus!

Think again.
Whatever decency they have have been overpowered by their need to win a prize.
There is more than one perpetrator in this scenario, what’s worse, they don’t even know it.

A thought.
Children are seldom asked about life decisions.
They will not understand, or so we assume.

Think some more.
The bottom of the triangle outweighs the top.
How many families who’d rather survive than be morally right?
How can they even think that one has to forego morals to live?

Well, gyrating like a manwhore on national broadcast is indeed a faster way to pay the bills if it means monetary bonuses in the game show. Especially if the bills involve someone in the hospital dying.  Noooo….Im not saying the kid has a dying relative.

What I’m trying to say? urgency of a certain situation dictates, and this is what the show is exploiting.
We need, they give…in their own terms.

And everybody flocks like willing sacrificial lambs.
And who can we blame for that?