It takes a good leader to make hard decisions. It takes an awesome leader to make hard and unpopular decisions just when he needs to be popular – like in the run up to an election year for example?

From this news report, it seems like Noli de Castro knows what an awesome leader is. I mean, sure, it was Cerge Remonde who said

I think we should not glorify and glamorize these people by giving in to their demands as to whom they would want to negotiate with. I think that could be a very bad policy.

But the way things work around here, if de Castro wanted to score a few easy brownie points, he could’ve easily overriden sensible voices and gone on to Sulu for the photo ops. It is, I think, to his credit that he seems to be toeing the reasonable line with this one. 

Which prolly begs the question, when has he ever gone against this government? I’m all for that whole loyalty thing, but there comes a time in a politician’s life when, if he can’t break ranks, he can at least make his discomfiture known. Has de Castro ever done that?

The answer to that question will be relevant to those who are now considering him for 2010. He’s done a significant amount of good, sure; but a person who has kept his ass too safe will turn off the voters.

All told, de Castro might know what it takes to be an awesome leader, but is he good enough to actually be one?

In several FV posts, benign0 has been asking a very difficult question:  What does the “Filipino” stand for? Quite predictably – and prolly because of who asked the question rather than because of the question itself – the horde replied quite emotionally.

It’s actually a very simple question with a very simple answer: Filipino stands for parochial.

Parochial means - insular: narrowly restricted in outlook or scope; being provincial, being narrow in scope, or considering only small sections of an issue; narrow-minded. Ever heard a more concise description of a Filipino?

Flag-wavers of every stripe will of course complain. Not a few will trot out examples of ‘global Filipinos’ or some such bullshit. But, puh-leeze. To every general rule, there is an exception; and if you try to find a definition that will include even the exceptions, you’re gonna be looking for a very long time.

AUDIO

A tip o’ the beret to LaTtEX for this ‘un. Gary Granada takes on GMA Kapuso Foundation for using his revisions to their lyrics (for a jingle he was commissioned to compose) without attribution – and here’s the kicker – using an audio-cast! Pure public relations genius, that! On one level, you’d think that the choice of medium – new media – was prolly a no-brainer. Granada was talking about music and lyrical composition after all, and it packs a helluva lot more punch to have the audience actually hear the claimed IP klepto-ing than to just say “I wuz robbed!” But on a PR level, Granada got his side out first, and did it in a way that puts GMA on the defensive in a really bad way. For one thing, Granada’s tone was calm and even throughout – not hysterical in the slightest. That alone clues you in that this is serious. But not so serious that he doesn’t joke a little. The touch of humor tells you that he isn’t desperate for sympathy – and by extension, that he’s not desperate for allies and is not out to raise a jihad. Like a general closely following Sun-Tzu’s play, Granada has chosen his battleground, and has clearly chosen it well. GMA is now on a slippery slope that it will, perforce, have to try to defend using legalese. In a country positively exhausted with the concept of “legally-right even if morally-questionable,” good luck with that

!

SIDEBAR: My quick and dirty analysis of the situation: Granada isn’t claiming that GMA used his music. What he claims is that GMA used his revisions of the lyrics – original copy was given to him and he tweaked it to fit the music he wrote – and set it to someone else’s music. According to Granada, the industry practice is that if the client isn’t happy with the work and decides to give it to someone else, then the client ought to give the new artist the original copy and let that new guy tweak it himself. GMA, according to Granada didn’t do that. Instead, GMA gave the new artist the lyrics as tweaked by Granada. Granada in effect says that the tweaking he did constitutes intellectual property, and that the use of his tweaked lyrics sans attribution is, at the very least, objectionable. I haven’t read GMA’s reply, but from what Granada himself quoted, it seems that GMA’s tack has been to claim that the tweaking of the lyrics was a ‘group effort.’ Granada admits that at least some of the changes were made during a pow-wow with GMA’s creatives – where presumably he suggested a few changes that the creatives agreed with. But he takes exception that that made it a group effort. At this point in the audiocast, Granada attempts to distinguish a song-writer from a copy-writer. Listen to the ‘cast and come to your own conclusions of course, but Granada’s distinctions seemed logical if a bit fuzzy. He basically says that adapting written copy – essentially a kind of poetic prose – to fit a song is something that only a song-writer can do; and that even if a song-writer does the tweaking in the company of a group of copy-writers who eventually agree, that still cannot qualify as group-writing. Group-writing to me implies that there was cooperative give and take; that it wasn’t Granada alone who made the changes but that some of the changes were proposed by the copyists. GMA may be implying that this is exactly how it went down, and Granda himself does not clearly refute this. He only sez that it’s ridiculous to call it a group effort. Like I said, fuzzy. Also: It is important to note that GMA has already telegraphed it’s potential defense that Granda’s tweaking was too minor to transform the original lyrics – copyright owned by GMA obviously – into a new work whose copyright belongs to Granada. But then again, even if the tweaks were major enough to create a new work out of the old, looking at the situation from an IP p-o-v, it is fairly safe to say that even tho’ the person who commissions the work does not necessarily own the copyright, he will usually have the right to use the work for the purpose for which the work was commissioned. And if GMA actually paid Granada for his work, you can imagine that it’ll be even easier to assume that GMA did have the right to use the work for their ad. On the other hand, the creator – Granada (assuming that the tweaked lyrics can be considered a new original) – also has the moral right to attribution. Now he can take action if the work is attributed to someone else, but does he have an actionable right if there was no attribution at all? Again, with only Granada’s ‘cast to go by, still pretty fuzzy. You can bet everything you own that this will be GMA’s playground if this tiff with Granada gets any bigger.

Over-all, even if GMA does prove that it owes Granada nothing, it will still come off as the bad-guy in this story. And for that, Granada has to be thankful to the power of new media. Me, I’m inclined to go with the moral aspect – the moral obligation of GMA to attribute at least some of the work to Granada. Besides, having Granada’s name attached to the project can only bring greater goodwill. Ironic that GMA apparently ignored that truth. VIDEO Hat tip to TSD for this one: Apparently, some people are starting to grumble about this ad, complaining about how it portrays Filipinos as ‘hungry’ and prone to violence. The prone to violence aspect is obvious. As for the ‘hungry,’ that can only make sense in the original tagalog idiom: patay-gutom. A better translation for that would be ‘greedy’ I guess. Or ‘greedy-guts.’ Whatevs. You get the point. Course, I would be happier if the guy who broke the mirror weren’t Filipino. But since he is, I have to wonder: so the fuck what? On another note, doesn’t the Skittles guy look familiar?

It’s funny how we so love the labels created by agitators. It’s a public relations tool, really: reduce a complex idea into as brief a statement as possible – a one-word slogan would be best – and feed it to the masses. After all, the masses don’t need to fully under the whys and hows; they just need something to chant or scream until their throats are raw – a kind of shortcut to meaning. It’s the power of symbol, and some say that it lay at the heart of Hitler’s success as a demagouge. This administration has seen more than its share of these ‘key words’ and now the latest agit-prop is “militarization.”

What the rest of the world understands as the process of preparing for war or other violent conflict, we gleefully appropriate the word “militarization” to refer to the naming of former military officials to top government posts. Implicit in the use of the word is the promise of dark days of repression to come, the demise of liberty, and the extinction of all that is good and beautiful …. zxngrkCKZ!

The preponderance of military men in high government positions isn’t necessarily the portent of doom that some people wish it to be – yes: i think they actually want it to be that, so that they can later on have the bragging rights of having called it out first. If we’re being calm and logical about it, the appointment of military men to high government positions can actually be attributed to a number of factors:

First, very few people in the lucrative private sector want to enter the thankless public service. With GMA as appointing authority, even fewer. This means that, second, candidates for top level positions are actually drawn from a pretty shallow pool of people currently – or were – in the public service. Third, of the people currently – or previously – in the public service, there are very few who are as well trained as military men of officer rank in management and planning – skills needed by any good administrator. This is so because the military invests much in the training and schooling of its officers. In fact, it is the rare military officer who spends more than a week being unemployed after retirement from the service. They get snapped up by private corporations who see their upper management skills as potential assets. An uncle of mine was picking among offers three months before he finally retired from the service!

Outside this logic loop, military men are also much in demand on their own right – without necessarily being fiddle to private sector top picks. This is especially true for such services as reasonably require a background in military-style operations and discipline. It’s all well and good to emphasize the civilian nature of, say the PDEA, but the truth of the matter is, the learning curve is much steeper (steeper=better) when the person trying to learn the ropes has a background in activities like intelligence gathering, urban skirmish, and enemy engagement. And yes, dealing with crooks nowadays is practically like dealing with a para-military unit. You don’t send Mother Teresa in to arrest a bunch of BDSM brothel whores with whips and ballgags.

So talk of militarization is likely to be just more fear-mongering.

In fact, if anything, there was a massive de-militarization of society when the Reserve Officer Training Course – and it’s latter day cousin, Citizen’s Military Training – was effectively shelved.

Which is better – in general terms? A homepage that has a static image and a link you need to click in order to get to the main content? Or a homepage that has everything on it?

Alright. Today, I got my very own domain name, and signed up for web-hosting. 

Which means:

1. I will have to wait 24-48 hours for my domain to propagate;

2. I will be hip deep in setting up my new blog-home which, hopefully, will also be the last … well, the last for a very long time at least; and

3. Those of you who care to will have to update your blogrolls and such. Like the very first smoke, this one will remain alive, but maybe real quiet. 

It does seem like a brave new world out there, doesn’t it? One that is no longer bound by old conventions or even old sensibilities. It seems like the world has found a new normal, and many of us are floundering.

Take Rustom Padilla, f’rinstance. He’s gone from matinee idol, to husband of one of the most attractive girls in show business, to estranged hubby, to showbiz exile, to a wannabee come-backer, and finally to re-emerge again as – he says – a brand new person who wants to be called Bebe Gandanghari.

I have to admit, I was one of those at a loss at what to say when I saw Padilla – Gandanghari – sashaying onstage with all the trappings of a woman, but still being quite unmistakably a man.

Was it noble self-actualization – as one netizen put it?

ang galing niya, siya na ata ang pinakamatapang na taong nakilala ko ngayon. hindi takot na magpakatotoo. mas mabuti ng magpakatotoo kesa ang maging hipokrita.

Or was it a last ditch attempt at reviving a career which – while not exactly moribund – was certainly on the skids? So hard to tell, and so easy to heap accolades on someone for doing something different simply because he did something different. Just as it is incredibly easy to brand as bigots those who refuse to embrace Gandanghari as unquestioningly as Oprah might.

Here’s what I think: I think Rustom Padilla might’ve been heavily influenced by drag queens in the States. Seeing the lack of serious drag queenery in Philippine show business (the nightclub circuit of course not being considered showbiz in this discussion), seeing the lack of any serious chance of him standing out in the biz as yet another pigeonholed gay actor, and finding in himself both the predisposition and the courage to be Priscilla Queen of the Desert for this country, he took the plunge. 

But could it really have been as mercenary as that?

Why not?

He is, after all, an entertainer and all entertainers need something to set them apart from the crowd. Without the comedy chops of the other gay entertainers, without any stellar acting skillz to speak of, what else did he have going for him except his willingness to dive into the outrageous?

Of course, he’s not likely to admit to such a base motivation. Knowing our penchant for drama, the emergence of Bebe Gandanghari will evolve into some self-affirming act, complete with complex psychological underpinnings, butterfly imagery, and a Danton Remoto-esque social agenda. But in the end, I think it will all be revealed to be more a fabulous fight for continued relevance in a business that seemed on the verge of forgetting him, than anything else.

The bravery of this new world, we will find, is nothing more than an act of desperation.

Mar Roxas, in his pre-mature campaigning teevee spot, sez we should nag the government some more for cheap medicines.

Why the government?

Why not nag the drug companies?

Like everyone else, I was really stoked to find out that Charice Pempengco, that little girl with the big growling voice, was going to sing at one of the pre-inaugural balls for the new American President.

At least I was until I found out what she was going to sing.

The kid is singing God Bless America. Now that is just so wrong on so many levels.

God Bless America, 
Land that I love. 
Stand beside her, and guide her 
Thru the night with a light from above. 
From the mountains, to the prairies, 
To the oceans, white with foam 
God bless America, My home sweet home.

While we must of course avoid being too literal minded about songs and such, the fact remains that this is not an ordinary song. As far as anthems go, God Bless America is right up there with the Star-Spangled Banner and Hail to the Chief. 

It’s a song that is so steeped in American tradition and sentiment that, one would think, it is a song that only an American should sing. Or a foreigner wanting to become an American.

After all, what is she supposed to sing? God Bless America, land that you love,  your home sweet home?