More rants.

The open letter is still spreading around. I got a number of emails thanking me or asking for permission to spread the email around. Yes, please. Spread it around. Spread it to all. You can even sign it if you want.

There is a part of me that says I should shut up today about this whole political rigmarole and move on to other issues (like Rustom Padilla's impending coming out tonight in Pinoy Big Brother). But the nutcases in Congress are still at it, and our concerned friends in media are still giving them a pulpit to fontificate on. So I will continue to rant.

Here are common scenes that I find ridiculous:

There is a rally. Any rally. All rallies in fact. There is a standoff as a phalanx of police men with shields and batons face off with the protesters who taunt them and scream all kinds of provocative propaganda slogans. There is a negotiation. In the end, the protesters agree to disperse. They go through the motions of dispersing, but actually, they just regroup two blocks away. Another standoff. Another negotiation. The protesters agree again to disperse...but this time, they continue to chant slogans and wave their flags. In other words, they are not actually dispersing, they are going through with their rally, with a slight difference: they are moving backwards to regroup one block away. The police arrests the leaders. And the leaders kick and scream "curtailment of freedom," "asan na ang ating mga karapatan?" "wala na ba tayong karapatan magsalita?" All the while, he is allowed to shout all he wants and the media actually takes footages of his ranting and screaming.

The protester is protesting suppression of his freedom of speech while screaming his guts out and spewing vitriol and making condemnations against the President and everyone else on public television! Ladies and gentlemen, the protester is protesting what he is enjoying to the hilt! O di ba tarantado!

Thus, we have UP students walking out of their classes to protest the curtailment of civil rights (such as the right to walk out of their classrooms in protest). Huh? Didn't they just do exactly that?

We have media people frothing in their mouths about how press freedom is being suppressed. Yes, they can rant and scream all they want about it and they do with such recklessness. So what threat are they talking about?

Imee Marcos holding on to the metal bars at the gates of Fort Bonifacio (sana totoong prison bars na lang yun) talking about the evils of dictatorship and authoritarianism. Eh lintek na babaeng ito, wala na tatalo sa pagiging diktador ng tatay mo, di ba pati nga si Tommy Manotoc napabalita na pinakidnap ng tatay mo!?!