HOW sensitive are our legislators?
Let me rephrase that in two ways: How sensitive are our legislators to the socioeconomic realities of the country? How sensitive are they to criticisms of their lifestyle?
The last State of the Nation Address (Sona) of President Aquino answered that question by way of a red carpet laid out for the legislators, and their spouses and families. The bleeding red carpet was meant for the wives, particularly, to show off their ternos or whatever their favorite designers had concocted for them to be dressed up in that day.
A huge network was prepared for that day. If there was a red carpet, then there should be glamorous beings treading on them. Why not have a competition? And so online a space was created where you could vote for the glamorous presence on that bloody (I am, of course, referring to the color) carpet. The result: Kris Aquino got the most point.
We understand the notion of dressing up and being decent for an event where a President delivers the address that sums up the situation where we find our nation. Given where we are right now, we should all dress in mourning. But that is not so. The wives and husbands, as well, prepare for this day, as the Legislative House props up a cage where they could strut like peacocks.
Let us paint a scenario where the congressman-husband comes home and reminds the wife of the Sona date. Imagine the wife saying, with a strong critical tone in her dulcet voice: What will the President say? Is he worth listening to? But that scenario is fantasy. Here is the reality. The husband comes and tells the wife to be ready for the Sona. The wife jumps from the sofa and screams: What will I wear?
Fast-forward to the red carpet. The cameras are ready. The women and some men are ready for their close-ups. The women twirl. Some men also want to twirl, but they catch their breath and stomp with bravado toward the red carpet. The photographers go crazy. The fashion police are ready with their paper and pen, and acid tongue. They are ready to critique not the politics but the fashion. Their tongues are dripping with poison not for a president who was noted for his nonpresence, but for the gown with the wrong color, the textile with the wrong ideology, the sheen that is not sinful enough.
The politico-husbands are transformed during the red-carpet hours into gallant men who are ready to step aside, so the world, well not really the world but our pathetic tiny world of sycophants, could gaze at the taste of women and men fashionable against the backdrop of poverty
and corruption.
Let me ask the question again: How sensitive are our legislators?
Do these politicians and their wives ever pause to think if the red carpet makes sense? I can give it to them that they are inured already to corruption—taking money here and pilfering a fund there—but what about good taste and guilt. When their cars pass through streets of hunger and destitution, what goes through the fashionably coiffed head?
Taste can never be legislated. Taste happens. It is cultivated. Schools and higher institutions of learning should teach taste. Churches and religious groups should instill taste, good taste, in their pastors, priests and potentates. The media should learn good taste, and that begins by not covering the gowns and barong of legislators and their kin.
I would propose that the House of Congress and House of Senate attempt to legislate sense and sensibility. Here is one practical move: Banish the red carpet to hell. Legislate that act, to make sure no one improvises on another structure where they could display their lack of sensitivity.
Ban this online voting. We have enough bad reputation with this kind of selection and election.
At the end of the day, the day should end with this red carpet pulled while men and women are on it. That act of violence would be amusing enough to remind everyone that there is a limit to flaunting wealth and beauty of any form.
Believe me, if those water hoses were trained not on the street protesters but on the wives and husbands preening as if the world was built on sartorial elegance, this world of ours would be a better place to live in. The purgation of these malpractices can bring us back to a nation, or what we imagined to be one, that properly thinks of its action because the universe and its forces can be listening and could transform us all into dumb mannequins.
I am not angry. I am laughing as I write this. Sanity in this land is threatened not by mad men and women, but by persons who measure good law in terms of carpet and fashion.
In the end, you have also a presidential address that assures everyone that there are now relatively fewer poor people among us. The same President forgets about his own warriors massacred somewhere because he was on some red or blue carpet?
I know I do not make sense. After the red carpet where the President’s sister won by landslide, nothing makes sense, really. Not Boy Abunda. Not even Albert Einstein.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano