Battered Pride

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, the Encyclopedia Britannica did not just raise Filipino eyebrows when it defined Filipina as a maid. An outrage of Filipino cries, demanding an apology from the Britannica, ensued. But, it never did.

Then, Claire Danes was quoted saying that Manila was a “ghastly and weird city.” She further remarked that the city “smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over and that there is no sewage and the people do not have anything—no arms, no legs, no eyes.” As a payback, her movies were banned, and she was named persona non grata by then President Joseph Ejercito Estrada. The good thing was, she issued an apology to the City of Manila.

Now, we are faced with Teri Hatcher’s line from the popular TV series, Desperate Housewives.

“Okay, before we go any further, can I just check those diplomas? Because, I would just like to make sure [that] they are not from some med[ical] school in the Philippines [Italics Mine].”

We, like madmen, responded with fury. Our government officials led the upheaval. Rep Bienvenido Abante, chair of the house committee on public information, wants the series banned from television. And, we want something that could wipe our shamed faces.

Hatcher is not to be blamed completely. She did not write the script, did she? Though her line stung our thoroughly bruised ego, it has much truth in it. Justly, the truth hurts.

On the other hand, it was right that we did remain vigilant. After all, it will not do much to lower our future opportunities in other countries.

There are some things that cannot be undone—time, when it is already lost; a bullet, when it is already fired; and words, when they have been said. To me, there is not much we can do to make Hatcher take her words back. After all, she, or the producers, was telling most of the truth.

What we can do is think of the present, instead of dwelling in the past. Of course, if we cannot change ourselves overnight, we cannot expect that we can change a whole country in a snap of a finger. It must take practice, a virtue evidently lacking in our culture. We must have patience to turn around a millennium of mistakes and patience to make “them” eat their words. If we want to change our image and make the best of this country and the future it has, we must remain fervent in changing ourselves.