Marcoses not apologizing / Mike Tyson back

It is a tragic folly of our culture that hardly anybody apologizes no matter how grievous the sin or the crime. And so life goes on with the past building a high wall against intrusion by the present. And the future dangles like a listing kite because the nation’s energy withers on the vine of inertia and forgetfulness. It is only in the confessional that the sinner starts to somewhat unburden with these words: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned." The father confessor eventually extends absolution in the name of God and penalizes the sinner by asking him to recite three or six Hail Maries – and that is that. The nation is back to sanctifying grace.

These thoughts descend on my head as I write this piece, the morning of February 25, the same date in 1986 when a flood of humanity at EDSA compelled the dictator and his family to flee without firing a single shot.

And so the questions arise. Why did those huge crowds gather at EDSA when they could have very well laid siege on Malacañang? The Marcoses could have suffered the same fate of the hated and reviled Causescus in Romania who were besieged by irate citizens and then and there executed. Or even if they sought to flee, Ferdinand and Imelda could have been caught by an alert people’s militia as Benito Mussolini and his mistress. Clara Petacci were and hung upside down. How come the NPA hit squads, notorious for revolutionary vengeance, did not even join EDSA and sneered it off as a bourgeois picnic?

The answer or answers I suppose lie in a culture where violence only breaks out because of the commission of ordinary crime or Christian and Muslims in Mindanao vent their hatred through war. Violence against the powers-that-be is unthinkable for the ordinary Filipino. And yet this would be justified violence. Those who have ruled our country for decades have committed the unpardonable crime of stealing the archipelago blind, pushing the citizenry deeper and deeper into the sinkhole of poverty, graft and corruption, and a system that punishes and convicts only the poor and hardly ever the rich.

And so I find it somewhat laughable that in memory of the 1986 EDSA, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) should now mount the parapets to summon the Marcoses – to what? To ask forgiveness from the Filipino people for the "atrocities committed during the 20-year reign of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos". Even for eccentric Filipino behavior, the PCGG’s statement takes the cake. Forgiveness? The PCGG should have long ago hounded the Marcoses to court and to prison. And if it were in the Filipino blood, the citizenry should have invested the Marcos residence with hue, cry and club when the family returned in 1992. As if happened, nobody seemed to care anymore.

The Marcoses will never apologize. The hell they won’t.

They came back at the right time. And they knew, like the departed dictator, that Filipinos were suckers for punishment, that they would let out a huge cry of passion every now and then, then forget all about it and carry on with their empty forlorn lives. They also knew the oligarchy would leave them alone, as the oligarchy has left alone the higher and the mightier among them who have participated in raping the nation. And all the more the Marcoses cannot be expected to apologize today. They fled the country at a time the country still had a conscience. They are back to a country that has lost that conscience.

Why indeed apologize? Today’s politicians are back to the pigsty, slurping the country’s riches the way the Marcos and his cronies did.

You can see the change immediately. Imee Marcos is back in contention, and so is top Marcos crony Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco. They feel they can go back to the scene of the dictator’s crimes. After all, the looting, the stealing today, the political thuggery and muggery have reached unprecedented proportions during a time of so-called democracy. It is hardly different from what the Marcoses and their cronies did during a time of dictatorship. So, it’s not only safe to come out, it‘s kosher.

* * *

You look at the Neandertal face. You are revolted. The face lights into a grin. And you are revolted even more. A few gold teeth show, and withal, the growling tonsils of a huge forest bear trapped by hunters and banging the bars of its prison. And yet you don’t leave the scene. You are entranced by the most colorful pugilistic showman ever since Muhammad Ali hang up his gloves. But Ali was handsome, a black, glowing Greek god, "the greatest" as he often boasted. And he was.

Mike Tyson is an insult to humanity. He breaks the law as often as he wills, has been in and out of jails for chronic rape, battery, assault and whatnot, banging an ex-wife with a swipe to the jaw that sent her crashing through a glass wall.

We thought that after world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis almost a year ago thrashed the iron out of Mike and sent him sprawling to the floor, Tyson would finally take his leave and spare the world his penchant for vicious drama and pugilistic peccadillo. Well, he didn’t. Just so the world would take notice, he had the area around his left eye tattooed. Facial tattoos look nice on some women. On Mike Tyson, this tattoo looked like the devil’s curling pitchfork.

And so he reaped enough publicity for his approaching non-title fight with Clifford Etienne in Memphis, Tennessee. Etienne, for all his glamorous French moniker, was no more and no less a bum, a perfect appetizer to be thrown to the bear pit for Tyson’s reborn passion to get back into the ring again with Lennox Lewis. The first appetizer, we must emphasize. Tyson says he needs two or three more fights. Each will mean bigger money, more than the $5 million Tyson got for laying out Etienne among the dandelions.

And he needs the big money very badly. Alimony money for two ex-wives tears a big hole into his bank account. He has a passion for all-night carousing, fancy cars, fast company, a son, greedy and grubby hangers-on. He also knows he has to take leave of all that, get back to being a professional fist-tosser with all the discipline, hard work, and self-sacrifice it requires. Of this, he says: "I haven’t been a professional in a long time. I don’t have a high crescendo about my boxing career. I haven’t received a lot of dignity from it. I have received a lot of pain." Bet you, that was ghost-written, the use of "crescendo" gave him away.

Whatever. After the tattoo, Mike Tyson had to prove he had something of the old Iron Mike left. He flattened Etienne in 49 seconds, earning $100,000 a second.

The growl was back. The menacing crouch was back, like the lifting and lowering of a cobra’s head. Some of the power was back. A few body blows, a few clinches, Tyson wresting free. Then came the right cross, whipped like a gladiator’s broadsword. It hit Etienne flush on the face. He lighted out flat on his back, like a balmy Christmas log snoring with chrysanthemums. When he recovered, Etienne was jubilant nonetheless because he received a $1 million paycheck, an amount he never pocketed before.

Now, there is no stopping Tyson again. With all that publicity, the world eats from his hands anew. Boxing is like that. It feeds on primitive passions. It is a killer sport like no other sport. It is what is left of gladiatorial combat during the time of the Caesars, when the crowds hailed the gladiator more than they hailed Caesar. It was blood oozing out, the breaking of bone, the sword doing its splendid work of brutally snuffing out life, a Juan Luna Spoliarium of dead gladiators being dragged out of the combat arena.

Mike Tyson resonates with those times. He is physically built for the job. He has a head and face stitched together like a bull. He has shoulders that belong to the Pyramids. He has a body hewn from mountain boulders, sloping to a waist that enables him to bob and weave like the first licks of an approaching typhoon. He is wild, a refugee from the streets when dagos fought with blacks, and Irish with Jews. Home was a tumble-down tenement of poor crowded families, mothers and fathers who cared not for their children, children who inhabited the asphalt jungle and those that survived were the meanest, toughest and most cunning of them all.

Such a one was Mike Tyson. As a toddler, he already knew about crime. As a teener, he entered the world of crime. As a teen-ager, he fought with daggers and his fists, mostly his fists. He achieved early fame with his ruthlessness and torrential fists. He was eventually spotted by a fight manager who grafted some discipline and some style on this wild, raging black boy. And so when Mike Tyson started to fight professionally, he came on as an enraged bull freed from its cloister. His punches must have been cobbled from Thor. They came like lightning and struck like lightning.

But he could not be disciplined for all time. His appetites were those of an animal, yes, but Tyson needed constant training, constant discipline, constant focus on his trade. This he did not have. And this cost him the world heavyweight championship at a time he could have held it for years.