Christmas wish backfires

During last Friday’s World View interview on YouTube, a seven-year-old boy named Joshua asked President Aquino what he wanted for Christmas. The president answered that all he wants for Christmas is less criticism.

The truth is, it would be far easier to give Aquino the two front teeth in the Chipmunks Christmas song than for him to get less criticism. Criticism is not something anyone just dishes out without cause or reason. It comes because someone asked for it.

In other words, if Aquino thinks he is getting more criticisms than he deserves, then he better sit down and start figuring out why. For he cannot just wish down criticism. He needs to stop inviting it. But that is not the point.

Actually, knowing how the World View YouTube interview questions have been prescreened days before the live event, I understand why such a question was allowed into what must have been a long list of questions begging for inclusion.

The intention was to project the human side of the president, with the little boy as the convenient prop. As such, the president should have been briefed on what kind of answer would fit the context of the question.

Aquino could have wished for something like having more time with his siblings during Christmas now that they are completely orphaned of both parents. That would have struck a very sympathetic chord in the hearts of family-oriented and Christmas-driven Filipinos.

Or he could have wished for a more lasting personal relationship with a woman, perhaps one who might eventually become his partner for life. That would have driven the romantic nuts in each and every Filipino into a stupor.

But for Aquino to answer a question clearly meant to charm and warm even the chilliest of hearts this Christmas with what appears to be his big, heavy, and bothersome personal baggage shows he just didn’t get it.

If I were to recall and paraphrase, yet again, a passage from one of my favorite movies, it was as if a pretty damsel threw herself into the lake in the hope her knight in shining armor would rescue her. Yet there stood Aquino on the shore, describing to her the water.

You do not whine about criticisms to a young boy of seven, for God’s sake, especially if all he wanted to find out was what you wanted for Christmas. There were other heavy stuff asked during the interview that required heavy answers. But now this one.

The Christmas question was planted, like a mistletoe, so Aquino can get his chance to be just another regular guy that you and I can identify. But you know what he did? He walked right smack into the door and kissed it.

You give the guy a chocolate and he thinks you want to drag him to the dentist. No wonder he does get more criticism than he deserves. He really begs for it. Here is a president boasting of one of the highest approval ratings ever, and he asks Santa Claus for no hate in the mail.

Now I am beginning to be convinced that Aquino cannot recognize opportunity even if it is already in the kitchen drinking his coffee. In all likelihood, he would still go to the door and have a look.

What a complete and catastrophic waste that even in an interview designed to bring out the best in the interviewee, Aquino still succeeds in accomplishing exactly the opposite unwanted result. Here is one guy who is not getting his Christmas wish.