Former Rep. Teddy Boy Locsin – who recently gained some measure of infamy for his “Teditorial” on NAIA, branding bloggers who criticized the airport as “homeless gays” with a not-so-subtle dig with “kneepads in restrooms” – is at it again.

This time, Mr. Locsin calls Inquirer’s tribute to the victims of the Ampatuan Massacre “just plain baduy.”  Without the homophobic innuendo, Locsin rambles on with contrarian pontifications criticizing the pictures of the columnists: kesyo the columnists who closed their eyes are in the act of forgetting, kesyo the columnists should open their eyes, kesyo the stunt was baduy, etc.  It’s as if Mr. Locsin held the monopoly of knowledge in meaning, in semiotics, in expression – whether artistic or journalistic – and that the schoolyard pejorative should make for a good summation.

While we’re no strangers to editorial segments in newscasts – the late Frankie Evangelista excelled at that – I guess we can all agree that editorializing has its functions as well as its limits.  For the lack of a disclaimer, as well as a lack of prudence in editing the talking-head piece, the caricature of Locsin has not only painted itself as an ultra-conservative elitist who does not hesitate to betray deep-seated homophobia, but now it also paints a caricature of a cantankerous nitpicker who forgets the importance and relevance of symbols and metaphors.

This, a week after the commemoration of the second year of the Ampatuan Massacre.  The other, a few days shy of Pride Day.

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The town is called Ampatuan, Maguindanao.  In that town, on November 23, 2009, 58 innocent civilians, journalists, lawyers, aides, supporters, and motorists were unceremoniously buried in mass graves after being murdered, massacred, and mutilated by gun-toting animals.  Two years later, justice remains elusive, slow, delayed… and perhaps even denied.

We remember not because of the gruesome details or that because it can happen to us.  We remember because it is right and proper and bold for us to remember.  We remember because two years later, no one has paid the price.  We remember because of so many people fighting for justice in a world filled with news items covering murdered celebrities and murdered innuendoes.  We remember because as far as the pursuit of justice is concerned, we have yet to be there.

Today is Blog Action Day to remember the Ampatuan Massacre.

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“There be dragons,” proclaims Bobit Avila in his latest column for The Philippine STAR, railing at the pro-RH crowd and the Communists among us, calling us back into the fold of the Catholic Church, and cites a laundry list of somewhat inappropriate examples of holy punishment to guide the lost sheep back to the shepherd.  Similes, metaphors, and correlations which, for lack of a better term, are made in heaven.  Surely the wages of sin find their own fires in Hell, for Franco and Mussolini and Hitler and the Communists he so hates, but the Earth is surely not one of them.  And maybe column spaces may be too limited to note that, among others:

• The economic crisis in Spain is caused by property bubbles, unemployment, and long-term credit deficits and loan crises, not a reproductive health law;
• Spain is not a Communist country, it is a Constitutional monarchy, and;
• There’s a really huge difference and disconnect in the metaphorical device of “the new Herods,” since the Massacre of the Innocents was anything but a public health measure enacted in Judea.

I really don’t mean any disrespect to deeply religious believers when I take up an affirmative position on the RH Bill, but it’s discussions like these (and “RH Bill will be a source of corruption” – so since roads and schools are a major source of corruption let’s stop building them, too, and that every other public good that can be grafted from should be eliminated altogether… more on that when I feel like it) that become very grating points.

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