greatest crimes

Why oh why did I wait 5 years before buying a copy of Christina Pantoja-Hidalgo’s Catch a Falling Star???

Really, it is a complete hindsight on my part. Ms. Pantoja-Hidalgo herself had told us about the adventures of Patriciang Payatot in some seminar in the AB AVR, and I can still remember Mich bristling with anticipation as we thought of getting a copy of that book, having enjoyed Recuerdo too much for a Lit201 homework (I’ve given up hoping my Recuerrdo will be back though, as it was borrowed by someone I’d rather not see again). And yet, probably due to inate laziness and rare, if misdirected, bursts of thrift (or stinginess, now that I think about it), we did not get the book. We opted to wait until getting it, like a dream job you never do anything about. It was not until the wonderful wonderful idea of PowerBooks to have that 20% sale that I finally got a copy of my own (along with Henry James’s What Maisie Knew and Ian McEwan’s Atonement which Ned is always raving about). And though I am to walk everyday to the office (seriously), I am positively happy about this purchase. 

It’s like reading your own memories of childhood. Patriciang Payatot may as well as been me, though of course, I wasn’t that good in school at all. But the grade school Ms. Pantoja-Hidalgo has described, along with the intricate subculture of prepubscent girls and the upright teachers, they were mine. The many characters of Patriciang Payatot’s family, with their own drama half-hidden from a girl’s innocent and curious eyes, they were also mine. I’m sure a hundred thousand girls (or boys, maybe) feel the same way, and yet it doesn’t diminish the significance, and power, of Catch a Falling Star.  

**************

I just saw 98degrees’s “Invisible Man” on MTV. What a hoot! Those things are actually considered vintage already! I can’t believe I based my teenage life on that song, no matter how, uh, profound it was. Strange thing is, if I heard it two years ago, I would most probably don’t think that being 13 years old was a long time ago. But today, I realized that that was 10 years ago. A decade ago. Time is really making a fool of us again.

**************

So in the past couple of weeks, I have read lots of entries of hate mail for a certain  Malu Fernandez. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. You hate her too.

As I do. I can never tolerate someone being so judgmental. I can’t say I’m not a hypocrite myself but she certainly takes the cake (I do think she would literally). And as of the rest of her alleged thinking public, I’m glad that she was forced to quit.

There were some things I really didn’t like though. The article (which Iah only IM’d to me so I didn’t get the link to it, sorry.) said that she was forced to quit because people where so incensed by her “alleged bigotry”. Alleged???! Being grossed by your own people, ALLEGED bigotry?? Ok, so I did study journalism and I know bigotry is the writer’s opinion and he was probably just being careful. But somehow, it just didn’t feel right to imply that her bigotry is just “alleged”. 

Also, it bothered me to read that she was peppered with death threats. I mean, really people. A death threat? I mean, I too would want her skewered (that is where she belongs afterall) but a death threat? Are we in a Nancy Drew mystery novel? I guess not, because anybody who’s read Nancy Drew knows that it never works.

Almost everything has been said about Malu Fernandez and her stupid little column, as well as of her non-apology letter. It is sad and this whole affair is just insulting. But above all, it seems like no one ever mentioned that she was being unpatriotic. And that is her greatest crime.

***********

“Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.”

-Albus Dumbledore 

~ by denice on 26 August, 2007.