“As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.”
by Ducky Paredes
“The War At Home” an attempt at a comical take on the dispute on the Spratlys between the Philippines and China that came out in Hong Kong magazine March 27th, 2009 has gotten a lot of protest from Pinoys all over crying racial discrimination. This was written by Chip Tsao and, to my mind, might even have been funny if it was written by a lighter touch by a more adept and deft wordsmith.
As in the furor over one scene in an American sitcom when we took on an American network, my reaction is that we should not be so thin-skinned when our own movies an television shows make fun of skin color, facial features and other racial differences that, in a more genteel world (the kind we live in when we want to scream discrimination). At any rate, here is the column:
“The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.
“But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.
“As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.
“Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.
“Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout ‘China, Madam/Sir’ loudly whenever they hear the word “Spratly.” They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, ‘Long live Chairman Mao!’ at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that’s going a bit too far, at least for the time being.”
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My take on this is that it was an attempt at humor that probably failed even with its primary audience in Hong Kong. The thought was funny – having a war with the country your maid considers home – while trying to maintain civil relations at home — but was badly executed. Still, it was never meant to be taken seriously. By taking it seriously, we Pinoys have set us up for a future feature on how humorless we can become. That one ought to be funnier but will probably raise a storm of protests especially if written by our sworn enemy Chip Tsao!
As I wrote in an earlier column when the BBC apologized to us over nothing: “I guess that counts as an apology considering how many of us Pinoys found fun in Borat Sagdiyev, the fictional character created and portrayed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in his satire on Kazakhstan. If we can find that funny, why should we be insulted when the same type of humor is inflicted on us Pinoys? The way I look at it. If something is funny when it affects Kazakhs, it ought to be just as funny when this is at the expense of us Pinoys.
“Otherwise, if we will be so onion-skinned we should also have complained about how Kazakhs have been treated by the British film industry.”
What seems to me to be funnier is that the magazine (a glossy that most Pinoys would never read, anyway) actually wrote our Department of Foreign Affairs an explanation that the DFA immediately proclaimed as an apology which it immediately accepted to end the incipient war of words.
China apologized. Apology accepted. After all, we are civilized people, aren’t we? Happy April Fools’ Day!
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We have a reaction from Vicente Nonato, an OFW: “Mr. Paredes… Do you happen to have pre-need plans?? If not… then perhaps you will not understand. That’s all.”
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I believe that what the Senate and the House have done on Celso de los Angeles and Legacy is already enough. What needs to now happen is for the case to be filed and prosecuted. While you – the Legacy plan holders – may already have been victimized, you now face the possibility of being victimized even further by the politicos who will come in, make their speeches, ask for your votes and leave without the case moving an inch forward.
Where are all the victims of other pre-need providers? Has anything happened to their funds or are they still in court and the scam-perpetrators still out of jail?
Someone correct me if I am wrong; but, am I right that the one scammer who actually went to jail — out of the hundreds who have been discovered – was the one who perpetrated the Agrix scam. And, on any scale, Agrix was a midget compared to the monstrous frauds that have reared their heads since.
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hvp 03.31.09)
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