Model Senators? HAH! Not quite, bitches. More like Senators who model so they can get a leg up on the competition the next time they have to get themselves re-elected. Who are they kidding, right?
I mean, with net worths running in the multi-millions (assets minus liabilities!), they can’t possibly be doing the ads for the money. Nor can they possibly be doing it for any legitimate cause, as Pia Cayetano and Dick Gordon so blithely insist.
Hello? Doing an ad for soap is a “legitimate advocacy of public health, hygiene and safety?” Not when you’re being the push-man for pay, Big Blue. The same goes for you, Prognathous Pia – even if you looked so pretty while saying “I personally lent my name to a good cause, which is saving water.”
The problem, you see, is that whatever good cause there is in your ad campaigns is soured by the cynicism of it all. If you truly wanted to advocate public health or saving water or whatever, you can just as easily do so without telling people to buy this product or that. After all, there are other soaps that do the same thing, and there are other products that help save water – why single out a particular brand? The answer is pretty simple and very accessible to anyone with one-quarter of a brain: so that brand can plaster your face all over town and saturate the air waves with your face and voice; in other words, to build up your presence in the national consciousness. The money is secondary.
In fact, I’m willing to bet my great-grandmother’s wedding ring that these pols get unreasonably low pay for the use of their image. Maybe they should be asked to disclose their modeling contracts so that the public can see if there really is an ex-deal going on. Of course, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much they’re paid. Whether large talent fees or small, the end result is their taking advantage of the marketing machinery of the brands they’re pushing.
Obviously, there’s nothing blatantly criminal about this kind of cynical and mercenary manipulation of the public mind. But it does skate too close to being morally reprehensible because it is both a dishonest act and a circumvention of the law that elected public officials have the sworn duty to abide by.
Filed under: 2010 watch, politics, Chiz Escudero, commercial models, dick gordon, Francis Pangilinan, Loren Legarda, Pia Cayetano, Ping Lacson, politics, Senators
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