Well, for one thing, their names all figured recently in Internet mailings with the kind of message you tend to get a dozen times over, in certain circles prone to expending copious verbiage on topics like ethnicity, indie films, Silliman Beach, whatever happened to F. Licsi Espino, the Pinoy diaspora, Belinda Bright, and the Balangiga Massacre.
Jol was the narrator of a long and bittersweet narrative relating his epic struggle to secure a Tax Identification Number (TIN) from the BIR; Duke figured in a confrontation with a security guard at Café Havana, who allegedly refused to let him in for being inappropriately dressed, while welcoming more sartorially challenged white guys into the place; and Rodel, a Fil-Am lawyer based in California for many decades now, was arrested for allegedly trying to pass a $100 counterfeit bill at a convenience store in what looks like a clear case of racial discrimination.
One of the great (if sometimes vexatious) things about the Internet is the ease with which we can promote and publish our cases and causes to virtual constituencies of thousands – instantaneously, practically for free, and with a much greater certainty of a response from the other side.
I have yet to establish whatever came out of Jol’s and Rodel’s cases; the Havana management eventually put out what I thought to be a rather lame explanation for the misencounter.
What struck me about these incident reports, aside from their intrinsic value as continuing chronicles of the Pinoy’s travails, was that I knew all of their authors and protagonists: Jol was my student in literature, and fellow VW fanatic; Duke is one of our best new instructors in the UP English department; and Rodel was my editor-in-chief on the high school paper (I was his associate editor and successor) many decades ago. Rodel – a truly brilliant speaker and writer who could talk a turtle out of its shell – was the first guy I knew who ever went to the US, and when he returned from the World Youth Forum in 1968, singing Good Morning, Starshine, I knew that he was meant for bigger places than Philam Homes. I’ve never seen him since; he returned to the States, took up law, and eventually sat on the board of a public utilities commission in San Francisco. The last I heard of him, very recently, he was the lawyer for Blanquita Pelaez, who filed a case in California against Sen. Ping Lacson. Definitely not the kind of guy who’d try to slip a fake Franklin (or should I say bogus Benjamin) past a convenience-store cashier.
But what a coincidence, although I probably shouldn’t be too surprised, these times when, thanks to the Internet, it looks like everybody knows everybody else, within a few degrees of separation.
You all remember what the late Andy Warhol said about everyone having his or her 15 minutes of fame in this media-saturated age. Now it looks like we’re in for our 15 kilobytes of fame, or something like it.
My faithful correspondent Mr. Bennie Campos was practically cackling when he told me to eat my words when the Americans stormed into Baghdad. What did I have to say now, he taunted, that the Americans won?
Well, I wrote right back, only a cross-eyed idiot would have doubted that the Americans would win this war on the ground. That outcome was a long-foregone conclusion. Break out the champagne, I urged Bennie, who seemed to need it; but just you wait for the fallout, because thanks to George W. Bush and to (expletive deleted) people like him, no American (or any other person of any nationality, for that matter) is going to feel safe anywhere in the world from now on.
Another message left me completely confounded, and it was one of the few I left unanswered. I mean – you try and answer this for me, if you can, although I suspect that she and Bennie Campos could carry a long, intense, and mutually meaningful discussion without any problem:
hello butch,
i enjoy reading your column.....and it seems that u r anti-war...well i jus want to make comment to those protesters and ralliest to that stupid things because no on can stop the war...it is bound to happen as it is stated in the Bible that there will be wars....i understand what are they protesting about....they want Peace and so they launched campaign to stop the war....yes we need peace but if ever the war will stop is peace already achieved....mr. butch and to all, Peace is not the absence of war, it is the absence of the presence of God.....so let Bush continue the war........everything happens for God....why we should worry when God is in our side......maybe those hwo worry has no God....thankx.....sheila mae
Let me also acknowledge receipt of a far more cogent message from Tony Smith, an American who’s lived here for a long while now, detailing the long and illustrious academic records of some of the White House and Pentagon principals in this war, the point of which was that, from Dubya down, these gray-suited people were far better educated and thus worthier of our belief and support than their more flamboyant critics like dropout Barbra Streisand.
I was prepared to be impressed – a lot of research had clearly gone into the piece – but wait a minute, I thought: education’s one thing, but what did these people do with their degrees? In other words, whom did they work for?
I did some mousing around and discovered that VP Dick Cheney worked as a top executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil services contractor – which is now angling to corner a chunk of the multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract. Oil giant Chevron took in Condo Rice and loved her so much that they even named an oil tanker after her. Prior to his confirmation as secretary of defense, Rumsfeld had millions invested in energy-related companies. And I didn’t even need to check the Web to remember Dubya’s long-standing and deep-rooted family ties to oil. Neither does his c.v. mention the fact that Bush never even went to the UK (nor much of the world, for that matter) until he was president (explaining his appalling insularity, for someone who proposes to reshape the planet – he may know every tree in Texas, but is lost in the world).
I’m not suggesting for one minute that employment with an oil company is cause for eternal damnation; but when a bunch of ex-oilmen take over the US government and lead an invasion of one of the world’s top oil-producing countries, you can’t help but wonder if a less than an altruistic spirit now rules the deserts of Arabia – and if all a PhD amounts to is a license to wreak havoc more smartly.
I was about to turn around and insinuate myself into their conversation when another word popped up: "Malacañang," followed by darkly whispered speculation that the Palace would advance its own preferred choices for the honor. I leaned backward so far that I nearly fell over, desperate to catch some names, but as if on cue, or perhaps realizing that their neighbor had an uncanny interest in none of his proper business, the two promptly got up and left, leaving some change on the table. Who were they? I thought I knew almost everyone in the arts community, but apparently not – one was a tall, fortyish guy with a smirk and a ponytail, and the other was small, with a crew-cut, pimply cheeks, and a military mien. Suspicious-looking characters, if you ask me, and hardly to be believed; I hope to God my instincts are right.