Impeach Philip Squared!

This commentary is follow-on from the previous article about America's failure to elect Jessica Sanchez as their idol. Jessica has become a Filipino idol and her loss in the American Idol competition was a crushing defeat for the Philippine Nation. Filipinos wept openly at the unfairness of it all. They place this heartbreaking loss right alongside the time a few years ago when Colonel Doctor Congressman Manny Pacquiao got thumped by some chump boxer named Morales from Mexico. To this day, Filipinos are convinced Morales had unfairly loaded his gloves with lead pipes.

It is rumored that rabid Jessica fans plan to close down Roxas Boulevard in Manila to protest in front of the American Embassy. Some are arguing that the VFA agreement should be torn up, and the Philippines should look to Japan and Italy for military backing in its little spat with China. One was quoted as saying "America, keep your damn submarines out of Subic Bay! . . . Unless it is named the USS Jessica!""

Well, JoeAm has broadened his literary portfolio to include investigative  journalism, not wishing to be out done by a couple of blogging women named Raisa and Ellen. He has dug deeply into this matter to find out exactly what went wrong. Who cheated. Who stuffed the ballot box for that white guy Phillip squared. How America went so wrong in its claim of racial diversity by failing to put Jessica on the masking tape X, mid-stage, where the winner stands when that most handsome of emcees, white guy Ryan Seacrest, crowns her. Joe set out to find out why Americans hate Filipinos so much they'd cheat an innocent 16 year old Filipino . . . oops, American with Filipino mama . . . out of her rightful title.

He first visited the Manila International Airport, and with 200 well-placed pesos, was able to get five minutes on the immigration computer to see the last time Jessica visited the Philippines. He concluded the record-keeping must be wrong, because her name was not listed.

So Mad-Dog Joe hooked up with a young niece in San Diego to get a sneak interview with a few of Jessica's friends at Chula Vista High School. His niece, an American out of Germany, 7th generation, went in disguise as an advance scout for the upcoming Charice concert tour in the US. You know, checking for places to include in the publicity rounds.

Well, that fell flat, too. It would appear that her friends had no idea who Charice was, so that was a bummer to start out with. Then it was revealed that Jessica rarely talked about the Philippines. Her friend Kirsty, an Irish American blonde chick on the cheerleading squad, stuck her megaphone in my niece's ear and shouted, "Like, she's AMERICAN, you know?" And some tall black guy behind her in CVHS athlete's jacket tossed in, "Is the Philippines one of those countries spun off from Russia?"

His buddy, a fat white Jewish guy with skull cap, thick glasses and a hard copy of Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" under his arm, whacked the jock in the arm and cried out "You stupid Doofus, the Philippines is in South America next to Argentina. That's why everybody there has Spanish names."

My niece left, quickly and quietly.

Undeterred, Joe Am booked a quick flight to meet with a highly placed source at Ateneo U in Manila, a professor of psychology who requested anonymity so as not to be dragged into the alley by rampaging students with "Jessica" tattooed on their arms. Gangs of marauders have been prowling the campus looking for anyone stupid enough to admit they liked Phillip squared over Jessica. They carried heavy metal chains and batons of very hard and illegally harvested nara wood.

The psyche professor suggested we go out onto the Plaza lawn to avoid being overheard.

"Why all this craziness in the Philippines for an AMERICAN singer?" I asked, left eyebrow arched in the way I imagine Sherlock Holmes would arch his.

"Associative pride," said the professor leaning his back against a fat tree. "The belief that if a Filipino does well, Filipinos finally get the recognition they lost when they were colonized by the States."

"Golly whiz," I uttered, censoring my irreligious tendency to exclaim "Holy Christ. That was over a century ago! The Sanchez kid is only 16! And she knows nothing about the Philippines."

The professor smiled. Or perhaps it was a wince. Or maybe just gas. "Well, things here don't change very fast. You understand this you ever try to set an appointment with a doctor or do a credit card transaction or buy a rubber. You can't. Parents feed kids the same attitudes as always, that Americans are imperialists and Filipinos are always taken advantage of and the only way to do better is to pray to the Lord for help."

"Not develop productive plans and execute them? Like, get modern or accept responsibility themselves?"

"Not in the cards, sorry. They pray, just like the Senate does when they open an impeachment trial. They don't look to the law for guidance, or their own sense of responsibility to their oath of office, but to the Lord. After all, there is no word for "responsibility" in any of our 114 dialects."

"Crazy."

"You don't know the half of it!" said the professor, his eyebrows furrowed deeply.

"Huh?"

"Think of the effort that goes into making up excuses. It's enough to make a grown shrink cry." The professor reached into the breast pocket of his tan corduroy blazer for a tissue. "Why, some Filipinos are even accusing Fox Network of rigging the voting on Idol! Evidently they discovered that Phillip squared is a Republican and Jessica belongs to the Young Democrats Society at school."

"Ah, so that's the reason for his win?"

"No, no, that's just what the lunati . . . er, Filipinos are saying. The reason for his win is that the audience of American Idol is mostly white women who dig sexy white guys. Plus that mousy Jimmy Iovine, the Idol music guy, gave Jessica a lousy song to sing at the end of three months of brilliant singing. He gave Phillip squared a cool song."

"Ah, that would explain why Jimmy Iovine fled for Iceland in the dead of night."

"Yes, it would."

I paused to think this through, chewing on my pencil eraser the way I imagined Sherlock would gum his cocaine pipe. "Well, psychologically speaking, exactly what makes the Philippines so desperate for wins by its contestants?"

The professor leaned forward in a threatening manner, snapping open a five-inch switch blade knife. "Please make sure you don't cite me as the source or I can make . ..  ummm . . . arrangements, you dig?"

"Loud and clear. Very."

He leaned back and returned the blade to the pocket of his corduroy jacket.

"First of all, consider if you were the 7th or 8th or 9th kid in a family, you simply don't get enough loving attention to build a sound base of esteem. You need more attention, more strokes. Always you need more. For the rest of your life, you need more."

"Hmmm, makes sense. I suppose the Catholic Church has not considered that."

"I'm not going there! But consider that you are one of 50 students in a school classroom. How much encouragement and nurturing do you figure you get?

"Damn little. You probably crave notice."

"Exactly. And consider that Filipinos everywhere are out seeking wins. At government offices and doctors offices you are treated as a nothing. In discussions with friends, the golden rule does not apply, and you are ridiculed for every mistake. Teachers order you about as if you were a child. Drivers in nice cars run you into the ditch. How would you feel?"

"Desperate for positive strokes. Needy, for wins."

He nodded, a slow, sad nod. "But the big need-builder is poverty. Consider if everybody seemed to have more than you. And no way could you ever catch up."

"Yeah, I see. You'd look for cheers wherever you could find them. Even in America."

The professor stood up and walked off. He paused about 10 paces away, turned, and said.

"And therapy is condemned across the land. So there is no cure." He turned and walked off.

It took a moment for all this to sink in. I turned to the fat tree and shouted. "Impeach Phillip! He stole the title from Jessica!"

And I reached for the tissues in my backpack.

Jessica Sanchez and Racial Profiling

Congratulations to Jessica Sanchez on her marvelous achievement, beating 69,998 other contestants to reach the final stage at American Idol. One guy topped her in the wild and woolly 132 million vote final contest, and so let's also extend our congratulations to Phillip Phillips.

A lot of Filipinos are upset that Jessica Sanchez did not win American Idol. She was out-polled by a white guy with a guitar.  Here's a sampling of some readouts:

1. "Phillips is the American, Jessica the Idol" said one.

2. The jokesters at ABS-CBN news were chuckling that since Jessica's father is Mexican and her mother is Filipino, why is she on American Idol? And when Pacquiao fights another Mexican, which national anthem will she sing?

3. Another Filipino commented that racial diversity in America is a joke, or Jessica would have won.

4. "Heartbreaking loss" roared the newspaper headline.

Well, let's parse this a bit, shall we? It is instructional in our cross-cultural dialogue.

First of all, let's deal with points one and two. If the Pacquiao fight were in Las Vegas, as most are, Miss Sanchez would sing the American National Anthem. What stage of denial are you people in?

Before getting to the point on racial diversity in America, let's go to the math.

Miss Sanchez is 50% Filipino by heritage and 50% Mexican by heritage. She is 100% American by nationality.

Now it is odd that Mexicans did not go wild voting for her. But Filipinos did. There are a bazillion Mexicans in the U.S. at last count, or maybe two bazillion if you include the illegals, some of whom may have cell phones, undoubtedly stolen. Filipinos, on the other hand, have been going nutso on Facebook to rally voters, and Ms. Sanchez's pretty face has been all over the place in the Philippines. President Aquino said he was rooting for her to win.

JoeAm, interestingly enough, is 93.75% German, and 100% racially Caucasian, by heritage. He suspects that German President Angela Merkel would not be rooting for him if he were a finalist in anything.

Now Philipp Phillips is . . . ummmm . . . let's see now, no one knows and no one cares. He's white. Some Filipinos appear to believe he cheats or has an advantage because he is not tinted of skin.

That view is reflected in comment number 3 on America not being culturally diverse because Miss Sanchez did not win. Boy, that is one quirky way to look at things. I'm sure glad we have a black President instead of some Abe Lincoln kind of white bright guy.

You know, race is completely irrelevant to anything, right? It is not as if one race is monkeys and another sloths and another zebras. It means our body structure varies because we grew up where there was sun, or there was not, or our butt muscles are well-developed because our ancestors did a lot of running fleeing lions in the grass, or our hair genes have blond in them, like some Samoan Islanders. Race is completely irrelevant to anything at all, except sun tans.

Citizenship or nationality means someone belongs to a different tribe, for security and sustenance. Nothing more or less.

Cultural values differ because different tribes arrived at their existing place through different wars and mountains and religions and other experiences. Communications and values vary a bit, culture to culture. It is a learned thing.

It seems to me this is one of those squirrely moments when a great many Filipinos somehow take second place as a personal insult. Race, nationality and culture get screwed up in a personal ball of twisted values. It is rather an upside down version of pride. Failing to win becomes an insult. Complainers start looking for people to blame. And obviously, America is to blame for Jessica's "heartbreaking failure" by not really being racially accepting of Jessica.

Well, first of all, people who issue anything but praise for Miss Sanchez diminish her achievement. Why would anyone wish to diminish this kid's brilliant achievement? Gripes and excuse-mongering suggest she should feel bad rather than good. It also denies her the growth she has achieved from her entry in the program as an insecure, stiff lounge singer to her winning style at the end, confident, bold, more emotionally attached to the song and audience, and clearly having fun. Why deny her the glory of that accomplishment which she earned through three months of hard work?

“I started thinking about how long the journey was, how far all of us had come — me and Jessica, Hollie and Josh and everybody. It’s insane, man. It’s not as easy as you think.”  Phillip Phillips on why, in tears, he could not finish his song after winning. Entertainment Weekly interview.

Yet the sense of Jessica's "failure", her "heartbreaking loss", is palpable in the Philippines.

Never mind that Ms. Sanchez beat out 69,998 other contestants. Never mind that Filipino tastes in music may be different than the mainstream American audience that does the voting. That audience consists of a lot of women . . . a lot of white women . . . who like good looking white guys with guitars who can sing, and who, like Phillip Phillips, have a unique kind of showman charisma. And who, in a particularly sultry song, look right at the camera and invite all those women to spend the night.

That the guy beat Jessica, who had about 300,000 Filipino Americans dialing up their votes like crazy for four hours, is testament to the white guy's popularity.

But many Filipinos would appear to prefer to take the win away from Phillip Phillips. Claim he did not deserve it. Claim there was a rat in the pantry. Jessica should have won. She was cheated. He was white.

Why, they almost sound a lot like Judge Corona on the witness stand.

Trust me, you don't need to weep for Jessica. She won, and she won big time.  She'll make more money than all of us, by far. She'll be a superstar because she is that good. She may even visit the Philippines. Or Mexico. Or Europe.

Does Jessica resent Phillip's win?

“I think America made the right choice, not that I don’t think I’m good, but he’s worked hard for it. He’s really, really put his heart and soul into it, and he’s pushed through all the health issues, and he’s done it. He did it.” Jessica Sanchez in an interview with Entertainment Weekly after the competition.

Why no resentment?

Because she thinks like most Americans do. The singers shared the journey together, an intense but friendly competition. Also because she was raised in a competitive culture that in the main respects both winners and "losers". Sportsmanship is big in America. Competition and striving to do your best are big. A loser in a sports contest is a loser in a game. He or she is usually a winner in life.

Phillip Phillips will also be a superstar, of the mode of Bruce Springsteen or  Paul Simon or . . . Hell, Phillip Phillips, who is unique, as a white guy with a guitar.

Now as for American racial diversity . . .

Jessica is a model of American racial diversity. Mexican and Filipino heritage. Welcomed to the land of the huddled masses along with her fellow imports from Ireland, England, Spain, France, Portugal, name the African nations, name the Latin American nations, name the Asian nations, India, Russia, Iran, Israel . . .  Well, you get my point. NO country is as diversified, racially or tribally, as America. NO country has been as open at accepting immigrants from ANYWHERE. All citizens are 100% American, and almost all subscribe 100% to America's values.

As for rooting for Jessica, no problem. That's great. It's good to have a favorite, whatever the reason. Looks, voice, style, personality, nationality, heritage. Good reasons to pick a favorite. Competition is exciting. Put some money on it next year, really amp up the juices.

If able to vote, I would have voted for Phillip. I like his musical style and electric charisma. But I would have smiled if Jessica had won. And Phillip would have smiled, too, proud of what the young American girl achieved with her really big, really expressive, WORLD-CLASS voice and style.

If I a may be allowed to assume a grandfatherly pose now. . .

I think Filipinos would do well to see themselves as racially blind, secure in their nationality, respectful of all tribes, and culturally broad-minded.  They need not judge themselves or their nation a failure because someone they cheered for lost. They should be secure enough to never ever take away a winner's glory. Or the glory deserved by someone who competed well.

For sure, nothing should be taken from Jessica Sanchez, a 16 year-old wonder kid, citizen of the entertainment world. How can an achievement that was so uplifting be heartbreaking? It was a glorious achievement.

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