"My Baby Has Warts"

I have this tendency to humanize institutions.

For example, I view Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation as an extension of his lascivious inclinations, where sex and dirt are more important than social awareness. His tabloids are world famous. Bohemians everywhere look up to the old curmudgeon. Him and Hugh Hefner. Even the conservative Fox News thrives on dirt. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has become so shrill and one-sided that it, too, an icon of virtue in my eyes as a business man, has slid bumptiously from its pedestal and landed sideways in the muck.

So News Corporation to me is a scurrilous Republican who waves the flag and preaches Mom and apple pie during the day whilst screwing the neighbor's daughter at night and diverting attention from the misdeed by spreading nasty rumors about the mayor.

If I look at the humanized personality of many of our institutions, I am led to believe we adults are nothing but children a lot older. And we are a lot better at playing pretend games. Boy howdy, a way lot better at playing pretend games.

US politics has little dignity and diplomacy left. It is shrill pubescent pushing and shoving to try to claim the manhood prize.

China is a teenage bully in a glass cage.

Pacific Long Distance Telephone Company is a snake-oil salesman, marketing its Smart wares with the innocent joyfulness of an 11 year-old on a sugar high whilst milking the poverty stricken Philippines for every centavo it can get. It promotes services it cannot fulfill because its phone pipelines aren't big enough to carry the traffic, but the public pays for each dropped call or a broadband internet connection that slows to 2KBS. Meanwhile, it sucks off depreciation cash and sends the dividends to Britain for overseas shareholders rather than re-investing in the Philippines to upgrade services to its customers.

The Philippine populace sits back gaga over Paris Hilton whilst millions of school kids get screwed out of their education and opportunity.

In that regard, the Philippine national persona is one of a teenage girl who is more interested in her hair and nails than her education. Who would rather watch Showtime than the Discovery Channel. Who is a Valley Girl at heart, but can't pronounce the American slang properly. Or maybe she is a twin, with her male counterpart being a teenage boy who is more interested in impressing his friends than developing a set of values that benefit mankind. Like courtesy, for one.

Children.

We are all children.

I do think the Philippines has matured over the past year. I'll give the country that. Some social issues have flared up, like outrage over 7,000 hectares of coral raided for smuggler profit, like the contentious but important dialogue on whether Jesus with a dick on his head is art, like the HR Bill which President Aquino has maturely added to his list of preferential legislation. If he keeps that up, he will develop a legacy as a president who actually tried to move the Philippines forward into the modern social world. He needs to get the Divorce Bill passed. Until he does, one aspect of the Philippine persona will remain abusive toward women.

Digression. As I think about it, I have changed my mind about the Cruz shock art display. I think the violent dispute it has stirred up has awakened the nation to the importance of art, the poor condition of its museums, and the limited world-class product emerging from its artists. In an empty room, shit will shine. So I no longer think it should not have been presented. However I do still think an aspect of the Philippine persona is lack of compassion. I wouldn't go so far as to say heartless, but I would say lack of a refined sense of caring for the well-being of others.

I'll be happy when Paris goes home and attention returns to following the glare of the spotlight on those who keep the Philippine persona as corrupt.

I'd like to see that also as a legacy of President Aquino. Building an honest government where once there was a government by the crooks and for the crooks.

Come to think of it, Philippine media are pretty much bimbos, aren't they? Shallow stories and quick hits that are largely star-powered.

I'm surprised Rupert Murdoch is not here.

Maybe he will be in a month or two, the way the phone hacking scandal is going in Great Britain.

The UK is an old man with apoplexy.

Germany and France are jealous lovers forced to dance together.

Japan is a teenage mountain climber who fell off a cliff. Bounced a couple of times on the way down.

US Republicans are a drunk southern white bubba, pounding the bible and pretending simple-minded slogans are great truths.

US Democrats are a greenpeace moralist in pinstripes.

President Obama actually is a reincarnated Abe Lincoln in disguise. No lie.