Driving along the familiar roads of Makati, I find that it is
almost impossible for one to never see a homeless person begging, literally, on
the street; their gray, unwashed hands knocking on windows of cars, their faces
pleading for some of your change, and for food that they may eat. It can be
heartbreaking sometimes, especially when the beggar is a child.
But in the Philippines, these people are a familiar sight.
Poverty is the rule, not the exception. And when I say poverty, I mean
knee-deep in the muck kind of poverty, and I can almost mean that literally.
Forget about quality of life or even dignity; in a lot of cases, these people
just want to survive. And you can see it in some of these homeless people’s
faces, their eyes conveying nothing but desperation.
There are con artists to be sure, who simply go out on the
streets to beg, acting like they were handicapped or insane, just so they
wouldn’t have to do an honest day’s work. But in a country where the poor
outnumber the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy in mind-boggling numbers, it is
difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the two.
Willie Revillame, an extremely popular celebrity in the
Philippines especially among the poor, was once under fire for allowing a child
named Jan-jan to simulate the dance of a male stripper on his game show. There
are several clips all over the internet, and the first thing you would notice
is that the child was crying while it was all happening, and that the audience,
in a cruel display of heartlessness, was laughing. Revillame, obviously possessing very little
empathy, even went so far as to say that he admired the child for doing what he
did just so he could help his family. He then gave Jan-jan Php10,000 as a prize
for his performance.
When you watch the whole thing, it literally makes you want to
throw up. Have our countrymen been ground so low that they would allow their
children to do something so obviously horrible just so they can get by? Are TV
shows so blinded by the bottom-line that they are willing to subject a child to
pointless psychological abuse just so its audiences are entertained? When will
we realize that these people who act like champions for the poor are nothing
but greedy hypocritical sharks who really do nothing but profit from our less
fortunate brethren? When will we realize that instead of helping, these shows
cultivate a culture of mendicancy, where instead of being taught to stand on
our own two feet, we are made to depend, our arms outstretched, on the alms
given by false kings?
In an obvious display of self-righteousness, one that shows his
ignorance and malice and worthlessness, Revillame claims that he shouldn’t be
criticized for what he did, and that he was only trying to help the poor and
that he only wanted to make people happy.
What hypocrisy. As Conrado de Quiros so
aptly put it, it is so “odious that he should treat his
guests exactly the opposite of the way Degeneres does. It’s utterly
distasteful. The beneficiaries in particular are bled dry for every tearful
detail of their miserable lives and made to look as though they are the
luckiest people in the world to have been the object of the show’s beneficence.
The gratefulness is way too sticky, the beneficiaries virtually kissing the
hand of Revillame, which isn’t always metaphorical. The cameras do not flinch
at this lavish display of emotion but catalogue every moment of it, with no
small encouragement from the host. Revillame himself does not bother to
distinguish between the show’s beneficence and his own. In fact he makes it a
point to encourage the belief—which has been the secret of his success—that he
is doing all this out of the goodness of his heart, and out of the depths of
his pockets.”
Revillame lives off the myth that he is one of the poor, that he wants nothing but to help them. The irony is that he is a multi-billionaire who generated his wealth at the expense of countless Filipinos’ dignity.
