Anyone who has heard about the shooting in Virginia Tech is shocked at the carnage.
The idea that an individual ? or two, as in the case of Columbine High School a few years back ? can walk into some campus and start shooting people dead is somehow as difficult to imagine and accept as the idea of someone using a passenger airliner as a projectile in itself.
But the image of campus mayhem is beginning to be an “only in America” image, maybe just as suicide bombers are immediately correlated with other cultures.
In the Philippines we have not yet reached that level of depravity. Maybe Ducat came closest to giving us the first Philippine example of what is becoming more and more a common occurrence in the US of A, but Bong Revilla and Chavit Singson arrived just in time to give that drama of a hostage taking an unceremonious end.
All of a sudden, a campus Rambo, all psyched up to kill as many American college or high school kids as he possibly can, is emerging as the new poster boy image of American society.
For a while I feared ours would be Rolito Go, representing every law-violating driver who had the gall to even be angry when confronted with his violation. And not just angry, mind you. But angry enough to pull out a pistol and shoot the living daylights out of a young Chinoy to put an end to his short, promising, and law-abiding life.
But Rolito has long faded into memory, and many others have come after him threatening to take his throne away, including, should he be found guilty as charged, former Batangas governor Antonio Leviste.
Could Virgilio Garcillano be the better poster boy for the Philippines, representing all the smooth operators populating every level of our public service, ready to provide, if the price is right, the appropriate knowhow of the system to circumvent that system and generate results desired by the client? I was old enough to know that the Leonardo Perez-era Comelec was one of the most vilified ones in history, which is why I am not mistaken that “Garci” ? apparently a Perez prot?g? ? has now emerged to eclipse his mentor in the apparent ability to massage the “peoples? will” and make it subservient to the (public) servant?s will!
And then again, maybe the poster boy of our society should be someone like the great comedian Dolphy, who through the years has served the nation well by helping us laugh our way through difficult times, as well as by helping us to become a more accepting society of the so-called ?third sex”. Dolphy, too, could very well represent the ability to come back, again and again, from sickbed, rising higher every time!
I?d prefer Dolphy, than another who claims he has nine lives. Yes, I refer to Ilocos Sur Governor Chavit Singson, who, like Dolphy, is known to admire beautiful women. But Chavit, too, may very well be the poster boy for those who can never seem to be put down. As he himself says, from grenades thrown at him to helicopter crashes, he just keeps on coming back like he has secured for himself some form of immortality.
Speaking of Chavit, maybe our poster boy should be Manny Pacquiao, Pacquiao the world champ, Pacquiao the political endorser who claims he has idolized Chavit since his childhood. Si Manny talaga, he sometimes clearly goes overboard, but heck, let?s give him that. As world champ and millionaire many times over we can now forgive some of his trespasses, especially if his wife does the same anyway. And there are many reasons Manny could be a poster boy ? primary for me being the fact that, in grand Filipino tradition, Manny has had a house built not only for his mother but also for his estranged father. Had Manny been a non-Filipino he may have very well built for them grand nursing homes, and made money on the side running it.
The Filipino “yabang” is evident in Manny, which counts further in his favor. And that yabang is both verbalized as well as expressed materially; notice how, during the posing of all fighters for his last event, only Manny was wearing an expensive wristwatch (a gold Rolex, I believe).
But if an athlete were to be our society poster boy, maybe others would think Efren “Bata” Reyes a better choice than Manny. Efren manifests the Filipino superstitions ? he doesn?t wear his “pustiso” during a match and (I hope I am wrong) he only showers after the game. He is soft-spoken despite the millions he has made, and he takes defeat as graciously as he relishes victories.
Not to mention the fact that he remains “Bata” even if he is clearly “matanda”.
I could go on and on, and argue, for example, that Rizal or Bonifacio or Lapu-Lapu, would be the ideal society poster boy, at least for those who don?t feel that their time has long passed. But the reason I have harped on the idea of a poster boy is this: For far too long we haven?t had that one outstanding human symbol, that one rallying point around whom society gathers. Admittedly in most countries it is a politician, or a retired one, though there also are the Desmond Tutus of the late 20th Century as here were the Mohandas Gandhis of the earlier part.
We haven?t been blessed with a countryman or two who has risen, by word and deed, over everyone else, to serve, willingly or not, as a beacon, or a rudder, someone whose ideals and principles are far beyond question that it makes the rest of us feel that striving to be closer to the best that we could all be is a doable task.
Instead we are surrounded with very human leaders ? people whom we excuse for cheating or lying or stealing because, heck, “everyone does it anyway”, an excuse made all the more abhorrent when used by a man of the cloth. For it only means that that is how far we have distanced ourselves from He in whose image we are said to have been created.
Whom would you nominate to be the ideal poster boy for our society?
