Mistaken presumption of heroism

Written on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am | by benign0

Thank God for the mikes and cameras shoved into Ces Drilon’s face (with Loren Legarda’s mug constantly edging in within camera view to boot). We get a raw, down-and-dirty account straight from the horse’s mouth about what it was REALLY all about for her.

It puts into context what Patricio said in an earlier comment:

Taking the cudgels of the average Filipino schmoe [(AFS)], who are we to say what the AFS wants or thinks when we don’t even belong to their class? I mean, maybe the [Average Filipino Schmoe] thinks that this kidnapping represents his true and present condition.

That’s right. We don’t know that. Which is why we cannot PRESUME to determine what constitutes an act of “duty” or “heroism” to the Average Pinoy Schmoe.

For that matter, it seems we had quite a lot to say about Ces Drilon’s regard for The Job to the extent of asserting back in the 10th of June that “Journalists will, on their own continue to keep their ears close to the ground as it is their professional duty to vigilantly safeguard the public’s right to information“.

Is it now.

To be fair, that may have accurately reflected Drilon’s thinking at the time. The facts speak differently NOW. Drilon in an interview right after her release said that a key epiphany she had while in captivity was a realisation of how much grief she had caused her family and KIDS all for the chase for a story. In fact she apologised profusely for all the trouble she caused.

Now that is what I call getting it.

Chasing The Story is, at the end of the day, just a job. It is not an act of heroism the way certain people pitch it to us, and it certainly becomes unimportant when one finally gets around to getting a bit of PERSPECTIVE.

It again highlights a need to re-think our penchant for slapping the “hero” label on such actions and PRESUMING to know — to the extent of romanticising — the intent of certain actions that lead to “incidents” like this.

Certainly the circus that grew out of this is no longer (or probably never was) Drilon’s creation. It is a creation of those who stand to PROFIT from it. It harks back to 2004 when Philippine military personnel were pulled out of Iraq on account of a certain Angelo de la Cruz’s ransom when I wrote:

That a Government would come to the rescue of a man who is fleeing the failure of his Government and people to build a prosperous nation — yes, OFWs are refugees from Filipino incompetence — and then lionise him as a hero is the height of hypocrisy. There are thousands, no, millions of Filipinos whose suffering and shameful poverty the nation routinely tolerates with banal efficiency (the only thing Filipinos are efficient at). Yet the Government chooses to focus on one man — and put at risk the interests of the larger Filipino people.

Very classy indeed. When it becomes glaringly apparent that there is a huge disjoint in what is seen as important by those who run the information dissemination infrastructure of our society as well as those who act and SPEND on behalf of the Average Pinoy Schmoe, it is time we pause to reflect on how we choose to wield and channel our individual talents.

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About The Author: benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.COM and has once been described as "one of the most enthusiastic hecklers of the politically-passionate" by a respected journalist.

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2 Responses to “Mistaken presumption of heroism”

  1. PSimeon on June 19th, 2008 11:12 pm

    Very valid points, indeed. There is a ring of truth that a misplaced heroism is being sung.
    But our analysis maybe based on a perspective exposed to developed country journalism.

    To an audience addicted to telenovelas, which the networks relentlessly feed, this kind of drama may just well be what the AFS wants to see unfold. Maybe the country have sunk so low, disasters have been aplenty, etc that the AFS looks for a victim who is in a much worse situation than him/her and project his sympathies, not necessarily making the victim a hero.

    Call it collective guilt or shame.

  2. benign0 on June 20th, 2008 10:03 am

    I wrote an article called National “Heroes”: When will we get over them? back in 2003 which was basically a call for an increased ethic of self-reliance. Excerpt:

    Our prospects for prosperity, however, lie within ourselves — not in a messianic bunch of leaders and exceptional few who are yet to come and not in the altruism of the more fortunate. What we need is the courage and open-mindedness to understand clearly what we need to do to re-tool our culture, mindsets and thought processes, and approach to doing things so that a nation-building machine that is truly able to compete could emerge out of the collective and quiet achievement of the majority.

    Once the APS assimilates a strong ethic of self-reliance, people like Loren Legarda whose approach to accumulating name-recall equity is by exploiting Pinoys’ pathetic fixation of heroes start to become less relevant in our society.

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