Is Kris back with Joey M?

No. I am not trying to get my column transferred to Entertainment nor am I trying to scoop Ricky Lo. So why am I writing about Kris A? Well… I had dinner last Monday with some business people and the conversation when I joined them at the table was about just that… Kris and Joey.

I guess they were not inclined to talk about Cesar Purisima’s proud accomplishment with the peso denominated bond issue. One of them scoffed that it was so much propaganda… the treasury could have saved money with a domestic offering.

So it was Kris and Joey before the antipasto. No, I volunteered… that’s absurd. Kris can’t be going back to Joey… not after that tearful live feed from the Aquino home in Times Street. I remember Korina Sanchez delicately interviewing Kris and we were watching from our monitors in the news room as she talked about being infected by Joey of some STD. It was one of those moments you remember clearly through the years… like what you were doing when you heard John F. Kennedy was shot.

That televised crying session may have been cathartic for Kris and I suspect, millions of televiewers felt a connection to Kris that could only be established by the sharing of such intimate details of her life. That made Kris prime public property… her life had become from then on, the longest running telenovela on television anywhere in the world.

By giving up her privacy, an act she reinforces now and then with similar public confessions, Kris became the most bankable brand in the local entertainment industry. She would gaze at us from almost every other billboard on EDSA. Her TV commercials came on one after the other. She has a magazine named after her chronicling her life, her thoughts, her obsessions. Not surprisingly, the magazine makes money too in a crowded market of glossies.

But seriously… why would otherwise no nonsense business people be talking about Kris instead of what’s happening to Kris’ brother, who after all, is our president? Maybe people are just tired and frustrated of all the serious stuff in the headlines from bungling SWATs to high level jueteng payoffs. People are looking for something to feel incensed about and yet not have to worry about another fallout for the country and the economy.

There could be a subconscious thing too. Think about it. Kris is pretty much like our Inang Bayan. Before anyone starts writing super angry Facebook posts protesting my even thinking about it, hear me out.

Those of my generation first heard of Kris during the dark days of martial law. She was this little girl bravely standing up in public plazas campaigning for her imprisoned father, the hero Ninoy. I remember that I could sense star quality in the way the little girl presented herself and delivered her message. If government didn’t control media at that time, Kris might have overthrown the dictatorship all by herself too.

Kris is who I think of when I think of a local superstar. Kris continually reinvents herself to fascinate us. Observed a blogsite I googled: “Newsrooms joke that we have Kris to thank for our periodic respite from hardcore bad news. When Kris is sad or hurt, we tune in to see how she’ll get out of her latest fix… she always seems to hit the ground running. She’s like a walking soap opera.”

This is why I think of Kris as like Inang Bayan. Like the country, she is full of promise… she could be anything she wants to be… but for some reason, she keeps on making the wrong choices. Philip Salvador, Joey Marquez, Robin Padilla… gee, Kris, why do you always choose men who any right thinking girl with your pedigree and breeding should find difficult to introduce to your mother?

And that’s the story of our country too. Through the years, we keep on electing Presidents and other public officials who have somehow let us down… We have yet to elect someone in recent years we could proudly present to Jose Rizal and to our pantheon of heroes as worthy of the sacrifices they have made.

Early this week, Imelda Marcos publicly broached the idea that our next President would be Bongbong. I am afraid that like Kris going back to Joey Marquez (if that rumor has any basis at all which I hope not) Inang Bayan will embrace another Marcos as if 20 years of misrule didn’t happen at all. It is as if Marcos didn’t screw our nation and inflicted on us the political version of Chlamydia from which we still have to get relief.

Kris and Inang Bayan could do better. I can understand Kris doing what she does because the heart knows what the heart wants and super star that she is, Kris is tao lamang. But we, the citizens of this country? Why can’t we collectively choose the right one?

And just as we thought we finally chose the right one, in the sense that he looks clean and had promised to fight corruption, this brother of Kris is turning out to be like her too — a good boy who can’t seem to make the right choices on people around him. When Kris makes a mistake in her choices, only she suffers the consequences. With Kris’ brother, his failure severely affects the country too.

Just as Kris was mesmerized with the wrong men she had chosen, P-Noy seems to be in a trance with close aides who have failed him in recent weeks. And P-Noy seems unmoved even now, as a close aide is suspected with the worse possible corruption taint in local politics that brought down a previous president: jueteng payola.

Choices. Life is all about choices. And we can’t start to make the right choices unless we start being as objective as we can. Human as we are, emotions cloud our choices. But responsibility not just to ourselves but to other people should force us to as best as we can, try to be rational when making choices.

It isn’t late… for Kris or for Inang Bayan. Both can start making good choices so that the future could be more promising and pleasant. Kris could choose to use her excess energy to promote worthy causes the way Rosa Rosal devoted her life to the Red Cross.

Kris could, for example, advocate the cause for greater understanding of autism so that society can free itself of misconceptions and prejudices. Kris of all people should have the motivation to create a better environment for those with autism to live as normal lives as they possibly could. I have covered Ninoy and I see a lot of Ninoy in Kris. But she has to make the choice to be what that little girl of Ninoy could be instead of the Boy Abunda sideshow that she now is.

Inang Bayan, that’s you and me, could decide to be more actively involved in ensuring good governance. A lot of us complain all the time. Some of us totally give up and go abroad. Many of us continue to propagate the culture of corruption that has kept our country from attaining its potentials.

I am concerned that many of us who were united in making sure we elected a candidate who promised to end corruption are now on the verge of giving up even before the first 100 days are over. It isn’t easy being taunted with jeers of “I told you so” by friends who early on said he didn’t have what it takes to run government. At the first sign of incompetence, we retreat to our shells in shame.

We should instead choose to howl bloody murder so that P-Noy makes the right choices. If he insists on surrounding himself with incompetents who may even be corrupt, we should not hesitate to use all the powers that enabled us to bring him to power to bear on him. He may be President but we are the Boss, which even he concedes.

In the end, Kris could well choose to go back to Joey Marquez or James Yap and that is no skin off our collective meddling noses. Kris may have lost her potential to be more than she is now, but that’s her life.

But Inang Bayan is different. It is about us. It is our business to make sure Inang Bayan makes the right choices. Our lives depend on it. Not even a stubborn P-Noy who chooses to stick with the wrong people can ignore the collective moan of disapproval from a nation who has just had enough of the bad choices made in the course of its history.

TV News

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

Kris A on being a news anchor: “I can’t deliver the news because I make too much news.”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. This and past columns may be accessed at www.boochanco.net <http://www.boochanco.net/>