I am a fan of Alec Baldwin. I know that when he makes a movie, it is really worth watching. There is no particular characteristic that I can figure why I like this actor, it is perhaps a typical first impression which lasted. I must have watched an Alec Baldwin movie in the past (which title I could not even recall) that stuck in to my mind. I am not an avid movie follower, so you can't expect me to guess. I can not even recall titles of movies except for some which are really block busters. I haven't watched any Alec Baldwin movie lately and never heard of him for a while until the “Filipino mail order bride” he joked on David Lettermen show.
Alec Baldwin has already apologized to the Philippines, the government and the people as a whole, about the joke he made. It was in David Letterman show where he said that He need a "mail-order bride" to achieve the goal of having more children in my life. He mentioned Filipino mail order bride and they laughed. I know that that was only a joke and nothing really personal.
I can also recall that sometime ago, in Desperate Housewives show, there was also a joke about Filipino medical practitioners. In the show it was mentioned by Teri Hatcher who plays Susan Mayer in the show that she said “Can I check those diplomas because I want to make sure that they're not from some med school in the Philippines?" I don't have to elaborate so much about this issue because all these, Alec Baldwin and Desperate Housewives slur have already been addressed. All them have apologized to all the Filipinos worldwide.
There was even this show in London where the maid was asked to dance by her employer, again, they apologized. And we have many more yet to come.
I noticed then that we as a people are so sensitive about our race. We all have the right however to declare war over those people who would trample over our dignity as a person, as people and as a nation. We have had enough of these crap for centuries under our colonizers and we don't want it to happen ever again.
The world is now very careful about human rights. We have watchers all over the world who takes charge of everybody's welfare. Colonization now comes in another form. It is now in the form of economic control, manipulation of resources where one nation cant move without the approval of the other primarily because they are under control. This is my theory, and I don't intend to discuss this thoroughly.
What I am interested to talk about now is the Filipino word (not the people) becoming a symbol of joke worldwide. It is ironic because our government is good at protesting about people all over the world who makes fun of the word Filipino, but does nothing to reverse the notion. The word Filipina (female) has even become synonymous to maid servant in one of the dictionaries, which we have also protested, by the way. And we have always been effective in our protests. It never returned to us empty.
The question of the day is, until when shall we keep protesting? Do you expect that these people who ridicules us and apologizes later would stop thinking that we are really a nation of maids, mail order brides etc just because they made an apology? I don't think so! They may stop at one point and realize that they were mistaken, but others may still retain that same thinking because that is what they see. They still see Filipinos migrating in flocks to work as maids. They still see Filipinas going abroad as ready made wives. They still see many of our women post their profiles on the net to look for husbands, and many more.
It is indeed an insult to be treated by other people as such. It comes to me as no surprise though, because it is the reality. You see our officials even promoting and marketing our workforces in foreign lands to get job offers. These jobs are mostly blue collar, but it cant be discounted that servant maids are still part of the package. Our teachers are even going abroad to apply as maids.
Our protests therefore are useless. We can protest to one but the other will sprout because we don't stop at the source. Our government is inutile about the plight of our workers here and abroad. We are stuck to the thinking that this is the farthest we can go.
We protest because we are being laughed at, but we appear to be even funnier when we cant accept our reality. It is hypocrisy. Let us protest, yes we should, but let us also act to address our issue, that is creating more jobs here in the Philippines for our people. Jobs that are real which lasts far beyond after the term of the president has expired.
One wild suggestion if I may. Congressmen have Countrywide Development Funds otherwise known as Pork Barrel. This comes in millions of pesos, Php70 Million if I am not mistaken ($3.2Millin), and if there are 288 congressmen (partylists included), this gives us Php 20 Billion ($430M), you can just imagine how many factories this can make for the people. It is suspected that 30% of these funds usually goes to corruption which gives us Php 6 Billion in corruption money. Even this corruption money alone can already create more than enough businesses for our people to work with.
Add up to these the monies the Palace pork barrel which is 9.8 Billion and the Senators pork barrel which is Php 200 Million each x 24 senator equals a whopping Php 4.8 Billion. there fore simple mathematics can tell us that congress, senate and palace porks equal to a gargantuan Php 34 Billion ($743 Million). Assuming again that my suspicion is correct that 30% goes to corruption, then we should have P10 Billion for business ventures. Imagine!
Where have all the monies gone?
Manny Pacquiao is better off in thinking to put up Php 1.5 Billion for a business venture in his hometown. Dont tell me that an ordinary boxer thinks better than our politicians? I cant tell you either. My apoligies.
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