Are Filipinos Onion-skinned?

Dear mouse,

Most of the op ed columnists mainstream media treated this Chip Tsao discrimination scandal lightly dismissing it as satire.

Worse is, a high-profile blogger-columnist lambasted the bloggers, (that’s ME ) included to have spewed crap because we do not know how to draw the line between a racial slur and a poorly written political slash social satire that made fun of our honest-sacrificing mothers-who-take care of other families to give them a bright future.

IMHO, the reaction of the people including towards this derogatory reference to our hardworking OFWs does not make them onion-skinned.

Blame our Culture

Unlike the Chinese people who were used to being censored and are still being censored up to now, the Filipinos are known to be outspoken and are vigilant of their rights. So outspoken that some opposition columnists call our government officials with funny names without being brought to court for libel or slander.

What would you expect if a HongKong “satirist” wrote that we are a nation of servants and therefore shouldn’t flex our muscles to our masters from whom we earn bread and butter ?

To me this is some form of arrogance.

Do these media opinion makers expect the Filipinos to take this sitting down when we were brought up in the culture where our national hero inculcated to us that there can be no tyrants where there are no slaves. The way Chip Tsao used servants is equivalent to slaves.

Are we onion-skinned that every time the word domestic helpers, maids, servants are criticized, we overreact? We are not and we don’t.

It is only when it is used in a wrong context and wrong reference with prejudices that people come out in droves to condemn the guilty party.

If we are criticized for the poor services of our overseas workers, then we defend them blindly, then we are onion-skinned.

We are not also oinion-skinned when we express outrage if some writer wants to criticize our government using the domestic helpers as the pawn. Ano yan, hindi mo kayang pagsabihan ang may-ari ng bahay kaya babastusin mo ang taong alam mong nakatira doon.

Whether it is satire or not, it reeks of discrimination to people whose only fault is to be citizens of a country which claim for a territory had been made even long before they were born—in 1946.

Besides, I may not be a writer and a columnist but I can point some elements in satire which are lacking in the article of Chip Tsao.

First, in satire an object is criticized because it falls short of some standard which the critic desires that it should reach.

I do not know what standard has not been met. What Chip Tsao wants is for domestic helpers to convince the Philippine government to withdraw the claim because China is the masters? Is that right?

Second: The best satire does not seek to do harm or damage by its ridicule.

The article has damaged the reputation of the domestic helpers by showing them that beggars cannot be choosers, they have to follow their “masters” or else…

What has this to do with Spratly?

Third: Satire seeks to create a shock of recognition and to make vice repulsive so that the vice will be expunged from the person or society under attack or from the person or society intended to benefit by the attack (regardless of who is the immediate object of attack); whenever possible this shock of recognition is to be conveyed through laughter or wit: the formula for satire is one of honey and medicine.

What I find repulsive is not about the target of his article, the domestic helpers. What is repulsive is found in his behavior when he wrote about making his domestic help to work more than the required legal working hours; threatening her to be deported and instructing her friends to convince them that Spratly is China’s territory.

The only humorous part that I can see here is when his message is received by these university graduate-domestic helpers …with the remark, Is he serious? With a slap on their foreheads.

So are we onion-skinned? Some say we are; when many Filipinos reacted on Malu Fernandez’ take on the OFWs cheap perfumes; some say we are when Boyet Fajardo made the poor cashier kneel for absolution of his “sin” to demand for ID from a person with a HINDI-MO-BA-AKO-KILALA syndrome.

No we are not onion-skinned. We just care for the common “tao’ who can not defend themselves and whose cause will not be taken up by mainstream media because they have to protect their own ilk who are as guilty as Chip Tsao or who are beholden to some powers. Malu Fernandez happened to be an aunt of a senator and a blood relative of a powerful clan.

Satire, my foot.