AFP – A Philippines official angrily hit back Monday at a U.S. media personality who said the nation had nothing going for it except boxing hero Manny Pacquiao and sex tours, branding him in ignorant fool.
In a profanity-laced podcast, Italian-American Adam Carolla also called Pacquiao a “[expletive] idiot” who “prays to chicken bones” for refusing demands by American rival Floyd Mayweather for an Olympic-style drug test.
“They got this (Pacquiao) and sex tours, that’s all they have over there. Get your [expletive] together Philippines. Jesus Christ. I mean, again, it’s fine to be proud of your countrymen. But that’s it? That’s all you got?”
The comments from Carolla, a radio and TV personality and comedian, triggered outrage in the Philippines, all the way from internet chatrooms to local radio hosts and up to the office of President Gloria Arroyo.
“He is an ignorant fool who belongs to a sick minority in the United States,” presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said.
“His statements carry zero weight for us. We will not dignify it by demanding an apology. In fact, he should apologize to his fellow Americans for giving them a collective black eye,” Olivar said.
Pacquiao is a national treasure in the impoverished Philippines, where even Muslim extremists and soldiers silence their guns during his fights.
Regarded globally as the best pound-for-pound fighter of his generation, Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to have won seven world championship belts in as many weight divisions.
But Carolla dismissed him as “just an illiterate guy who happens to smash other guys in the head better than other people.?
Talks for a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight fell through earlier in the year when the American insisted on Olympic-style drug testing. Pacquiao refused, saying a blood test would affect his performance.
Pacquiao instead fought Ghana’s Joshua Clottey, who he defeated to retain his World Boxing Organization welterweight belt last month.
