"Aren't All Filipinas, Sluts Anyway?"

The quintessential writer on Philippine women's issues, PDI's Rina Jimenez David had this to say on the use of the word SLUT and President Cory Aquino on the Daily Show of Jon Stewart.

...there's another "slur" on American TV that's got us Pinoys all riled up. "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" is being castigated for showing a picture of Cory Aquino supposedly wearing a T-shirt bearing the word "slut," as part of a pseudo-story on how former women presidents are faring. I love our Tita Cory, but really, if you can't laugh at a skit on "The Daily Show," then your sense of humor needs some working on!

I should be charitable and just assume that Rina has not had much chance to think about the incident, which is why she wants her readers to just laugh it off.

What she fails to see is the "sociological root" of the joke-parody of Cory Aquino as a SLUT with the body of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Or in simple terms, WHY Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee might have thought the skit would work. It is because of the old stereotype brought home by many young and old American servicemen who had the best sex they ever had in places like Clark and Subic that all Filipinas sluts, wonderful sluts!" Of course the fact that many Filipinos probably agree with them means there is no monopoly on horniness or racism or stereotypes. It's like the stereotype that all Italians are Mafiosi; that Irishmen are drunks; that Chinese are corrupt, greedy and worship money as their god; that Jews are worse than the Chinese; that Poles are stupid, but Negroes and Mexicans are stupider, etc.

So it must be a woeful day when our resident feminist turns out to be not only insensitive herself, but could be mistaken to be sexist to boot. It must be because she agrees with Jon Stewart's liberal politics and would not know how to castigate such an ideological comrade.

Here's is another strange and uncharacteristic reaction. In an email to a popular message board, Rodel Rodis, a well known Filipino-American politician in the San Francisco Bay Area, president of the City College School Board, and more than a dear old friend:

Cesar and the spokeswoman of Cory over-reacted to the "slut" reference to Cory in the Daily Show. I am a regular fan of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show which is the best news show in television and which, according to polls, is watched by 30% of all college kids. While it regularly excoriates Bush for his daily blunders and misdeeds, it does so in a satirical manner. It put the word "slut" over a picture of Cory in a segment about respected female leaders. The Daily Show would put "slut" over a picture of Mother Theresa and a sainted halo over the heads of Madonna and Britney Spears. That's par for the course in the show. To compare that satiric piece with the real damaging defamation of Desperate Houswives is ridiculous.

Well there you have it folks, from the "best news show on television"--Aren't all Filipinas, sluts anyway?--and that is why you should find it funny when a clearly non-slutty Filipina is portrayed like the "stuff" you get from Boy Bastos dot com? It's just a "satiric" piece on all Filipinas, compared to the "real damaging defamation of Desperate Housewives".

Well, it is true that in the Desperate Housewives thingy it wasn't Filipinas mainly but male Filipino doctors who are affected (though two of my brothers and a sister are medical doctors in the US). But there, the real culprits for the "sociological root" of the joke (Teri Hatcher:"I want to make sure he didn't graduate from some med school in the Philippines.") are Filipinos, not American GIs. Namely, the greedy Review Center operators and corrupt government officials who were responsible for that scandalous nursing exam leak last year, which damaged the reputation of mainly female nurses, the aforesaid Filipinas. ALL Filipino OFWs are paying now for the damage to that reputation in the form of a new stereotype created by the scandal that foreign medical graduates all come from low standard schools or cheat to get their licenses and
diplomas. ABC TV is just the cat lapping up the milk the spilt by the err, leakers.

Then again, I also understand something about the American psyche and sociology. You see, they like good sports with good humor. Racist and nationalist slurs are how they welcome you to the mainstream, as a test of whether you can give as much as you can take, whether you can make it in that there meritocracy. Every immigrant wave that has made it in America have had to endure some of that at some time.

Viking of Norwegian Would has the "profuse" apology of Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee who basically suggest, like Rina David, that if you can't take political parody and satire you can just eat excrement.

Filipino doctors and nurses are fully appreciated by all who know them. They have proven themselves to be intelligent, hardworking and worthy Americans. They can laugh it off, but they don't have to like it or take it either.

In America, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Maybe Rodel Rodis will be offered a role in the next Desperate Housewives. He is handsome and winsome enough, most of the time.

Maybe it means Filipino Americans are going mainstream. Maybe all the attention will finally force the US Congress to recognize the historic contribution of an even earlier set of emigrants to America--the Filipino war veterans.

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BTW: ANIMO LA SALLE! UAAP BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS!
Green Archers defeat U.E. Red Warriors 73-64 and Ateneo Blue Eagles weeks ago. Green Archers Rule!