SATTIsfaction

DESPERATE PINOYS

Here we go again, beating our chest and making hell out of a perceived racial slur made by American actress Teri Hatcher in her ABC Television Network show ``Desperate Housewives.’’

Oh! Come on, pusong mamon, we only make ourselves look ridiculous for being this sensitive. The more noise we create about this issue, the more we bring ourselves down and the bigger rating we are creating for the show. For all we know, the show’s writers might have intentionally cooked up such remark to trigger international outcry and to push their ratings up.

Making a big thing out of the supposed slur only reinforces the negative perception that we are a race of ``insecured’’ people prone to smashing the mirror and shooting down the messenger because we don’t like what we see, hear or listen from other races or from the international media.

Wake up people! We are living in an internet-linked ``global village’’ where any perceived slur can come our away any time of the day and from any Mang Tomas, Dick Gordon and Dirty Harry with a keyboard or IPod to push. We are indeed just a click away from any slur from any moron anywhere in the world; do we then have to do battle against all of them?

Look at China, we have no less than a highly controversial senator – the iron-tongue Sen. Mirriam Defensor-Santiago -- accusing the Chinese race of allegedly inventing corruption in the world and did we see Chinese all over the world raising a collective howl against it? What Defensor did was far worse; she insulted them in an official capacity as a Philippines senator during a Senate hearing and before the media of the world. Yet, that did not wake up the sleeping Chinese dragon.

Remember, the Chinese are known to be the biggest population in the world with Chinatowns sprouting in all the nooks and crannies in the planet; and a collective protest from them could drown us. Just imagine half of their population firing anti-Pinoy hate mails and blog entries our way? It could very well crash all our computer systems. No need for them to use their arsenal of nuclear weapons.

So what if Hatcher insulted our nurses and medical professionals, we may even deserve such kind of a wake-up call. Why? Just recall how we all reacted to the issue involving the nursing board exams leak? Did we all go out in the street to condemn and call for the public hanging of the nursing board officials and review centers responsible for the mess?

No! All of us where either quiet or most were even advocating for a no-retake for a misplaced pity for the nurses. We even blamed the media and those advocating for retake for the whole mess because it had already then reached the US and other international news fora. Did we ever lift a finger to damn the perpetrators? What did the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) do about it? What did you do about it?

Back then, I already had an inkling that one day we will pay for our sins of allowing the perpetrators of the nursing leak go unpunished by public indignation and ridicule. In trying to save the thousands of examinees, we have nailed the entire 80 million Filipinos to the cross of world public opinion.

Now we are reaping the whirlwind.

How can we expect Hatcher and the rest of the world to respect us and our nursing profession if we ourselves did nothing to help keep its integrity intact by joining calls and demonstrations calling for a retake and for the prosecution of the guilty? Had we done that then, it would have shown that Filipinos don’t condone cheating in the profession that is virtually keeping the Philippine economy from collapsing.

Now the few brave souls led by UST Dean Rene Tadle and the handful of students from Baguio City who brought the matter to the Supreme Court could only say: ``I told you so.’’

By keeping a collective silence or apathy over the nursing scam, we have condoned cheating. What does that make us? A country of cheats, of course! There is just no two ways to look at cheating, you either go marching to the depths of hell to condemn it or you keep quiet about it and in doing, help perpetuate it.

Hatcher’s scriptwriters clearly saw things as they are and wrote about it. So who then is to blame for creating the perception that we all allow cheating in our nursing examinations? Most of us did.

Instead of blaming Hatcher, I would rather we put the blame on the nursing board officials, the reviewers who continue to act as if nothing happened and all of us for bringing this slur upon ourselves. Let’s boycott the review centers involved in the mess!

Instead of flooding ABC with hate mails and blog entries, let’s all strive to stop letting people here cheat us out of our dignity and next time a scandal erupts, let’s go out in the street and show in no uncertain term our national disgust to it before the whole world. Please, let’s take this Pinoy image problem by the horn!

He who is without sin should throw the anti-Hatcher e-mail petition/blog entry first …