Malu Fernandez
The Marocharim Experiment… first cross-post in, like, ever >
Somewhere in the blogosphere, I just heard that the controversial Malu Fernandez resigned from the Manila Standard because of that article about OFW’s. Needless to say, though, I don’t share the same sympathy for Ms. Fernandez with that of Miles Levin, the cancer patient who blogged about his battle with cancer and recently, has just died.
Believe me, I like ridiculing people. One of the things I like best about living is to call people names and to insult them for the hell of it. Often, this ridicule is passed off as “satire,” “social criticism” and “commentary.” You can take any chump in the street and make a Conrado de Quiros out of him. Go read any tabloid, read the opinion columns, and you’ll see what I mean.
I think what made Malu Fernandez the almost-Antichrist of the Filipino blogosphere (although I wouldn’t take too lightly to that, because I have this deluded belief that I’m that almost-Antichrist) is her unrepentant dislike for OFW’s, her elitism, and for all intents and purposes, her weight. The way I see it, if you’re going to go about your business discriminating people, you might as well say it outright, disclose the fact that you’re a bigot, and we’re even. But if you do that very same thing and pass it off as “journalism,” “creative writing” or “satire,” or if you’re going to create this “character” as a venue to vent out your prejudice, I suggest you wrap razor wire around your neck, hang yourself on the tallest tree you can find, and do the “Du-du-du Da-da-da.”
I don’t think that it’s right to single out a Malu Fernandez, or a Tim Yap for that matter: I think that there’s enough razor wire and tall trees in the Philippines for us to have a mass execution to rid ourselves of journalistic ineptitude once and for all (let’s start with “investigative reporters”). The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with being a prejudiced and discriminating bigot for so long as you admit to being one, and you do your prejudgment, discriminating and bigotry as what it is and not pass it off as an exercise in “journalism.”
This, I think, is the whole lesson in the Malu Fernandez controversy. There is room for all sorts of bigotry and prejudice in this world: nobody denies anyone a chance to laugh at a farting man who ate his fill of sarciadong kamote. We really can’t tie ourselves down to a frame of ethics that prevents us from mocking people, from discriminating, from drinking deep from the bottle of Hate-a-rade. But the least we expect from all of this discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and hatred is honest disclosure.
I’m no rapper, but if you’re gonna have to hate a playa, the playa run game on ya, buck wild with the trigger. You know what, I heard that from somewhere…
we all criticize somtyms! but ..u gotta think hard b4 u push that pen..ur on the paper..think b4 pushin the pen..
“Responses to an OFW-Basher”
By Jerick T Aguilar
After shamelessly writing about her summer trip to Boracay and Greece in the June 2007 issue of People Asia magazine, this columnist was found guilty of character assassination of our overseas Filipino domestic helpers regardless of the fact that they have never wronged her, except – in her opinion – for being on the same economy flight that everyone is entitled to. As a writer and traveler myself, please find below my notes on some of the things she wrote. I may also be guilty of character assassination but at least mine is not baseless and I think of this more as defending our fellow “kababayans” working abroad.
“But I was too ashamed to ditch my friends and forego the huge amount I already paid for my share of the villa.” – Outright pretentious! People rent and share villas in Boracay to save on expensive hotel charges per night so writing that she paid a “huge amount” is plainly preposterous!
“Meanwhile, when all of this was going on, I was on the cell phone …” – Proper English writing uses the conjunction “while” when it is followed by the progressive (this case in the past) and interrupted by the simple tense – so “while all of this was going on, I was …” – I thought a columnist for a magazine (and newspaper) would have a knowledge of English much better than a domestic helper’s!
“Ron is my travel buddy … so between his schedule and mine, the logistics are a nightmare.” – “Logistics” is a non-countable noun and, hence, is always followed by a singular verb – so “… logistics is a nightmare.” Ditto!
“Emirates had won best economy class and some award.” – “Award”, on the other hand, is a countable noun (i.e. it has singular and plural forms) and the modifier “some” means more than one – so “… some awards.” – My, oh my! Our housemaid even knows better English than her!
“I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there.” – Duh?!? Majority of OFWs are in Saudi Arabia, unless she doesn’t know what the word “majority” means. And another duh! To be “stationed” means to stay in one place – it’s obvious that our OFWs don’t just stay there, she was with them while traveling back to the Philippines.
“Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.” – Okay, a plane is a form of public transportation so the preposition “on” instead of “in” is used (e.g. on a bus, on a train, etc.) so “… trapped on a plane …” Yeah, she should’ve slashed her wrist in order to prevent writing more grammatical mistakes! (I hope her readers do not know that she is Filipino! Nakakahiya kung ganoon! – Sorry but the English translation does not suffice!)
“… I would never risk losing if my luggage ended up in the middle of the Sahara desert.” – Her plane took off from Dubai then landed in Athens where the flight plan is northeast of the Sahara desert, unless there was a stopover in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Now is she really a traveler or was it just her first time to travel?…
“… the seats were so small I had bruises …” – Okay, didn’t she mention that Emirates had won best economy class? So I wonder if the seats were so small or she was simply so big?
“Domestic helper ka rin ba?” – She wrote this question as if she overheard it while dozing off. I bet she was actually asked this question. I mean, I would whether or not I were a domestic helper given her fashion sense in the pictures (not at all to demean the clothing style of our domestic helpers but one cannot really differentiate hers from theirs).
“… the weather report on CNN … was wrong because it was still winter.” – Hold on, summer in the Philippines from April to June is already spring in Europe. And even if the European winter in March extended till April, Greece is in the Mediterranean so it would’ve already been warm by then. So was it really a cold winter while she was there or she just wanted to impress her readers by mentioning the word “throw” as a noun and not as the usual verb (and by wearing it to look less fat in the picture)?
“I adamantly wanted to go to Santorini … but due to time constraints, we were unable to go.” – Talk about being pretentious again! She intentionally forgot to mention “money” as another constraint! Didn’t she just write that she had to fly economy?
“I guess God was watching out for us.” – And now she thinks God was after writing that God had sent her to her own private hell being on a plane with “those domestics”. One of the rules of journalism is to be consistent (aside from having perfect English, of course!) so I guess she is the exception.
“This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can …” – Another cardinal rule of journalism is to avoid redundancy so a “fish” in a sardine can sounds much better. I don’t think she’s a traveler, I don’t think she’s a journalist either… What is she then? An abomination?
“… with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while my Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.” – Interesting how she made reference to Jo Malone in which a perfume wardrobe costs more than $1,000 yet she had to take the economy flight to Athens and back…
“But for a couple of weeks, I had the great escape …” – What was that again? A “couple of weeks” when she wrote beforehand of her “time constraints”? Greece is not China so a visit to Santorini from Athens can be squeezed even within a week of staying there. And before that, she wrote “Pick a country!” as if she can go anywhere she wants to. But she ended up saving on her plane ticket only to be “trapped” with OFWs and “smelling like air freshener”. She is the height of pretension indeed!
Three things to my “supposed” fellow writer and traveler – first off, if you have to write something in English, do not forget the simple rules of grammar so you do not cause intellectual harm to the people reading your article. Secondly, if you do not have money to pay for a business class fare, then don’t complain if you are surrounded by OFWs who can only afford an economy flight. As a final note, I suggest you thank these OFWs instead of demeaning them! If it weren’t for the billions of foreign currency remittances that our country regularly receives from them, the instability and depreciation of the peso-dollar exchange rate would’ve prohibited you from traveling to Greece in the first place (and buying that Jo Malone, assuming you already did)!
On behalf of our beloved OFWs, I have coined a new word to immortalize the infamy that the stupid Malu Fernandez created. The word sits strategically between the words malignant and manhole (both descriptive of Malu herself) in the Webster’s Dictionary. May the word be used in street conversations and political debates and be quoted in articles as a lesson for would be Marie Antoinettes in the future.
*malufernandific (adj.n. origin Phil.)(1)a feeling of self-entitlement; (2) refers to a person with delusions of grandeur to the point of feeling scorn towards the disadvantaged sector of the society;(3) an event or phenomenon that reminds one of the hanging of Marie Anotinette;(4) a braggart;(5) noveau riche;(6) crass pig; Lexicogrphic History: Word originated from the biggest faux pax in the history of class struggle in the Philippines created by Malu Fernandez who was a columnist for Manila Standard until August 2007.