Snake charmers

Worse than a moral moron with a loaded gun.

It’s something scary but no one really wants to talk about. Exactly what is a moral moron? Someone clueless about morals? Someone who knows what morals are but doesn’t care? Are we to take "loaded gun" literally?

I remember what a French philosopher once said: "There is nothing more dangerous than courageous stupidity". He obviously did not imagine that in time there would be people who would actually make a living killing people literally and figuratively through the written or spoken word.

My friend Pastor Joey told us about the column/article someone once wrote that ultimately killed Karen Carpenter, the very famous pop singer. Nothing rabid, scandalous, or utterly offensive.

Nothing more than an insensitive article that referred to "Karen Carpenter, the chubby sister of Richard Carpenter". The word "chubby" killed her.

Exaggeration? Not quite, not if you’ve ever been a chubby young adult, left out of the fun because you didn’t look good. The writer was not a political pundit, no hardcore opinion writer, certainly not an investigative journalist. Just an entertainment writer. But the writer goes down in history for an insensitive remark that caused the eventual death of Karen Carpenter.

Who killed Princess Diana? The chauffeur? I think not? Paparazzi we call them. But to be quite cold it was all in the name of entertainment. Whose entertainment?

We often hear the term homophobic specially hurled at people who speak out against the homosexual lifestyle. Recently there was so much gushing and praising for Brokeback Mountain as a breakthrough for cowboy films.

But what fails to catch attention is when the so-called gay or sympathetic writers hound so-called "closet gay" individuals, write blind items about their movie dates, and persecute them for not coming out in the open and admit what has essentially been gossip.

Considering how much difficulty gay people have to live with, it is tragic that some of their kind can be so insensitive and selfish. Must one jeopardize his or her work, professional status, or privacy so some selfish individual can have the pleasure to claim "I told you so!"

We are all guilty of abusing the concept that once you are a celebrity, you become public property. According to what written law is this based upon?

For a culture that puts so much value to honor and saving face, we have yet again adopted a western practice that has now turned into a national virus.

This abuse, this national virus now justified our baseless accusations against each other’s person, faith, family, politics and profession. We pass on presumption and hearsay like first person testimony.

Sadly the merchants of malice, those who make money by using and twisting media, feel justified to do so in their need to protect business or political interest.

Like snake charmers, they utilize pets full of venom, no morals, lots of presumptions, and a desperate need to be the center of attraction. They dance just to get out of the pit of anonymity.

But snakes have to feed and to do so, their natural instinct is to bite with deadly venom. They make no moral or factual distinctions.

Sadly as the snakes dance they hypnotize us. And so we loose our fear of snakes, we are entertained, we are beguiled. We begin to admire them, we begin to consider having them as pets. Soon enough we spend a lot of time with them.

Until one day we too speak with a forked tongue, shedding our loyalties, our morals as the need arises. Hissing at the truth, we dance to the tune of the snake charmers.

My mentor Steve pointed out the flaw in our collective view as Filipinos. Why do we dwell in what we already know is unpleasant, useless, and destructive?

As a result I now spend more time listening to FM or music CDs than political commentary masquerading as news programs. I question the background, competence, bedroom if not boardroom relationships of so-called experts or sources.

I’ve made a mental file of information sources, categorized them from truth to fantasy, relevant to waste of time, inspiring to expiring and after establishing my standards, I now spend my precious little time for blessings, not venom.

This is not overly idealistic. When I started out with the TV talk show Straight Talk I remember the prophets of doom who said being nice and just letting people tell their story would never work.

They gave me two months that eventually lasted five years. It could have gone longer except I needed to move on to make a living. I’ve moved on, I still need to make a living.

As far as our record stands you could count in one hand the unpleasant shows. Mostly it was about bringing out the truth and the good in people on their terms and not forced out of them. It was about not being a snake charmer.

People like the show. People appreciated the show. People supported the show. There was no snake charmer and definitely no basket of venomous snakes.

Beware snake charmer! For many of your kind have been bitten. Remember the phrase, "biting the hand that feeds you".