A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

Fredo, you’re my older brother, and I love you. But don’t ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.

- Michael Corleone, The Godfather

A friend from college pointed me to a recent hullabaloo in the homeland. It’s about a certain writer from a certain magazine and broadsheet with dubious standards who made some totally arrogant comments about OFWs. I won’t bring it up again (Google it!) She ultimately resigned after OFWs and the blogging community raised a stink.

I just have to say that the columnist’s wacko comment and her follow-up column in which she wondered why no one got her “acerbic wit” is sadly indicative of what most people from her *ahem* class think of all those poor masses leaving the country looking for jobs abroad. She, her publishers, and editors made the mistake of actually printing it.

I say it’s a good thing it happened. I just hope people who were aghast and angered by this whole incident sees her for what she is - a symptom of a bigger problem. Her kind conveniently forgets that those OFWs she insulted for having cheap perfume and bad fashion sense contributes over a billion dollars to the Philippine economy. That’s the money that keeps the government afloat. That’s the money which her employers used to pay her to write her column. That’s where the money used by her customers for whatever business she was in (God knows her day job wasn’t writing, could it?) came from. Bottomline: the country owes a big debt of gratitude to OFWs. Show some respect.

Me, I’d rather see the society columns in newspapers go. Me, I blame Maurice Arcache. (Okay I’m only half kidding about the last one.)