Bruce exults: ‘I’m proud to be a Filipino!’ Is he the only one?

An aspiring young writer asked this old journalist how to become a good writer.

Not claiming to be one myself, I gave this reply: "You don’t have to learn to write comedy – just write about the antics of our politicians, especially those running for the Senate. What’s more, just mention the word ‘Senate’ and your readers will immediately begin laughing.

"You don’t need to learn to write tragedy. Just narrate what is happening to our people – and, worse, if or when the flipflop politicians now hogging the headlines are elected. (Alas, too often, this is a self-inflicted tragedy.)

"You don’t have to learn how to recognize gibberish. Just listen to, or read the press releases of the same politicians."

* * *

We’re too clever by half. Here’s what’s going around in text messages:

GMA – economic mind; Roco – academic mind; Eddie – Godly mind; Loren – changeable mind; Noli – no mind; Ping – mastermind; FPJ – NEVER MIND.

The real danger is that the survey ratings now spewing forth, all putting him in the lead, will go to FPJ’s head. Perhaps they already have.

It was very weird, of course, of the unpredictable Miriam Defensor-Santiago to have deserted the Panday Senatorial ticket, and jumped surprisingly over – would you believe? – to the GMA ticket.

Miriam "defected" in a hump because she disliked Senator Loren Legarda. (Indeed, former President Estrada had endorsed Miriam or else Senator Gringo Honasan to be FPJ’s vice presidential runningmate instead of Loren.)

Okay, so Miriam hates Loren; but why, then join her friend Erap’s foe, GMA? Mind you – lest the usual Battle Axes begin sharpening their axes – I’m not saying, ‘Just like a woman’. But it does give you second thoughts about the widespread boast that if women were running the world this would be a more peaceful place.

Don’t get me wrong. Miriam is running high in the popularity polls – many sympathize with her for the loss of her son, others must miss her bladed tongue on the entablado (including those classic lines: ‘I’ll cut you up into a thousand pieces!’). Yet it’s intriguing how her mind and emotions do the hula-hula. On television, at her son’s wake, Miriam had weepily declared she would give up politics in deference to her boy’s wishes. Less than two weeks later, when FPJ was being challenged to air his platform and engage in a debate, there was Miriam, again on TV, declaring that if FPJ couldn’t speak, she’s speak for him and debate with anybody. "You think you people are so smart?" She’d dared the critics. "See how you’ll come out with Miram facing you!"

Now, Miriam has done an about-face. She will be speaking against Poe, instead. Sanamagan.

In universities, students, both in literature and psychology, are tasked to study three great Greek tragic poets. To me, the most memorable was Sophocles (497-406 B.C.) from Colonus, near Athens. Gifted, scion of a wealthy manufacturer of armor – a bestselling item in the Wal-Marts of warlike ancient Greece – he wrote the most successful tragedies churning them out by the dozen like a dime novelist until he reached 90.

Sophocles won 20 "triumphs" or first prizes for his tragedies, plus second and third prizes.

His rival, Euripides, copped only three. Perhaps Aeschylus might have topped him – he got 13 – but that poet died at 68.

You’ll recognize Sophocles, whose tragedies had the main actors backstopped by the famous Greek Chorus (no relation to the Las Vegas line, or the New York City Music Hall Rockettes), when you read the names of his plays: His most renowned, Oedipus Rex (King Oedipus) or Oedipus Tyrannus, even gave psychologists a term for a wacko, oedipus complex.

Other plays of Sophocles, who was also an Athenian military and naval commander, and chairman of the Board of Tax Collectors on levies imposed on subject states, are the equally famous Antigone, Ichneutai, Philoctetes. His tragic women were the most notable of his vividly-drawn characters: Antigone, Deianeira, Tecmessa – and Electra.

I’ll bet you’re most familiar with the latter, since his tragedy, Mourning Becomes Electra continues, in modern guise, to be put on stage and was once even made into a movie.

Sophocles ought to come down from his nap with the old gods on Olympus and do one entitled, "Mourning Becomes Miriam." I would be fascinated to know how the grand Greek tragedian would conclude such an opus.

Or should this be in the realm of Greek Comedy?

* * *

Yesterday, you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when you spotted the forced smile on the pretty face of Loren Legarda when she was made to pose with the surprise of the week, the "resurrected" second-choice draftee in the Senatorial line-up of her runningmate, Fernando Poe Jr. This was Erap’s anointed son, former San Juan Mayor Jinggoy Estrada. Our mischievous editors put that photo on the front page of yesterday’s newspaper.

Jinggoy, for his part, was grinning from ear to ear like the cat that swallowed the canary. He had been kept out of the slate to the anger and distress of his father, the frothing Erap of Camp Capinpin, until Miriam’s defection to GMA left a vacancy for the previously disgruntled Jinggoy. (As we learn in school, "matter abhors a vacuum", and there, like a flash was Jinggoy energetically pushed by Pop to fill that vacuum.)

FPJ had earned plaudits by resolutely ruling Jinggoy out in the first line-up, much to his pal Joseph Estrada’s anger. Erap had fumed all over the place that he had been "offended" and felt "insulted" by Ronnie Poe’s rejection of his "my son, my son." Sanamagan, Pareng Erap, hasn’t been dethroned and put in jail taught you the importance of patience, and not appearing greedy? Erap should realize that FPJ is for him "the only game in town". If GMA is re-elected, she’ll stop giving him golf carts, or letting him go abroad to get treatment in America (she’ll yank him back into irons). If Ping gets elected, which daily gets more iffy, he’ll remember that Erap junked him in favor of FPJ. Then the word "deadball" might become something as painful as Kuratong Baleleng. If Roco wins – then they’ll throw away the key for Erap, perhaps drop it without a ripple into the kangkungan. By making FPJ look like a cheap Estrada tuta, surrogate, or clone, they damage the prospects of Da King.

As for Jinggoy, aren’t charges still pending against him? Or has he been completely cleared by the Sandiganbayan already?

Susmariosep. When you look at all the Senatorial slates of all the Presidential contenders – where’s the one of Ping Lacson? – one despairs. For that matter, though, when one examines the roster of the present Senate – he despairs, too.

The Parliamentary System as an alternative? Sounds nice. But we may find the same Old Faces coming into the chamber (or their wives, son, daughters, brothers, and sisters) re-inventing themselves as Honorable Members of Parliament.

In this Quick-Fix country, nothing really gets fixed.

* * *

Bruce McTavish flew back to Manila from Japan aboard a Northwest Airlines flight last Sunday night from refereeing the World Flyweight Boxing Championship in Yokohama. It had been a 12-round bruiser of a championship dust-up which had left the famous International Referee McTavish almost as exhausted as the contenders themselves.

In the confusion of his 10 p.m. arrival and emergence from the airport terminal, Bruce left his clutchbag behind in his pushcart. The bag had been filled with his dollars, passport, credit cards, etc. Halfway down Roxas Boulevard, McTavish realized the awful tragedy of Sophoclean proportions which had befallen him. He told his driver to make a u-turn and run through all the red lights back to the airport.

As soon as his van pulled up to the curb outside the terminal, there was this bunch of airport policemen who met him. One of them grinned: "Relax, Mr. McTavish!"

"Relax? How can I relax? I've lost my clutchbag. I've lost everything!" Bruce exclaimed.

"Yes, we know what you came for," the airport cop smiled even more broadly. "Here, it is." He held up the clutch bag – with everything inside it, intact. "We were just waiting for you to come and retrieve it."

The policeman had seen McTavish get into his van. It was only after the vehicle was gone that he espied the bag left behind in the pushcart. Bruce had placed his coat over it, so when he had taken away his coat, he had overlooked the clutchbag beneath the jacket.

It was not because the policemen on the spot knew McTavish by name and reputation, McTavish told me later (although he was quite pleased they had recognized him) but the fact that it belied the sad impression that Filipinos are "dishonest".

"I’ve lived here for 37 years!" Bruce exulted. "Filipinos are great. I’m proud to be a Filipino!"

I can attest to the veracity of McTavish’s airport conclusion. I left behind a bag months ago myself and it was returned to me entirely intact. God bless ’em!

As for Bruce McTavish, married to a beautiful Angeles lady (he’s often called McTayag), with a beautiful Pampanga family, he first came to the Philippines on February 12, 1967. He was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, where he got his college degree, then went on to London to earn a Masters in Physical Education, next worked in New York, USA, and Sydney, Australia. During the Vietnam War he had a ranking position in Chrysler Corp. which sent him to supervise the firm’s contacts and activities in US bases in Vietnam, Japan (Okinawa), Guam and South Korea. He goes out twice or three times a year to referee world championships and other international boxing matches, which frequently puts him in the limelight of world boxing. One of his worst experiences, he laughingly recalls, was a year ago in Novosibirsk, Siberia (Russia) where he referred a boxing championship held in an ice-skating rink in temperature 18 degrees below zero. The only reason his teeth stopped chattering was that they were iced-up and didn’t rattle anymore. They invited him to return to referee another match a month later, but he declined.

Bruce says he’ll soon be celebrating his happy 37th year in the Philippines. Once, a street punk in Angeles remarked as he passed by, "Alis ka na, Puti!" (Go away, you white guy). McTavish wagged a finger at him: "Hoy, kid. I’ve been here longer than you!"