A letter to Vice Ganda

Dear Vice,

Young as I am, I know the plight of the Filipino people. In a country that is saddled with poverty and hunger, I understand the need of our people to smile, to laugh and have a break. There is so much this nation’s televiewers have to thank you for lightening up their moods, in the same way there is for you to thank them for patronizing your jokes, TV shows and concerts.

But there is one thing I just cannot take. And it is when people use or wrongly use their profession to castigate another.  The Philippines has no business with you if you indiscriminately crack jokes because Filipinos, although at times emotional, are also gifted with the intellect of deciphering the joke from the truth. But the same intellect provides Filipinos with the gift to understand the boundaries by which your jokes must operate.

By choosing a respected, multi-awarded TV host and media practitioner and the sensitive issue of “gang-rape” as the very subjects of your joke, you have simply gone overboard, way beyond the field in which you should have stayed. I seriously used to be a number fan of your wit as a comedian but by attempting to create a funny picture out of someone and something that should have been given high opinion and utmost sensitivity, I now feel the need to reconsider.

Vice, this nation might be in dire need of total entertainment each time, but the same nation also places high regard to the media. In fact, it places higher regard to the media than it does to comedians like you. That is why you cannot blame netizens from all corners of the social media outpouring their support for someone they look up to in the field of broadcasting which ironically, you just found way too easy to become subject of ridicule.

This is not to defend the broadcaster or the rape victims. This is to defend appropriate remarking. All the 99 million Filipinos can always laugh at your uneducated jokes, but it does not change the fact that they still are uneducated. And uneducated jokes have no place in a venue where people paid several hundred pesos to take pleasure in. 

Also, I think that the true mark of a comedian is when he is able to make people laugh without shoving realities down their throats. The last time I checked, you were really good at that—capitalizing on people’s weaknesses to win other people’s laugh. I am not a comedian but I think that’s not the way to do it and anyone who engages in that kind of tactic simply lacks class.

In the end, my fervent hope is for you to realize that respect begets respect. This nation has not lost all its decency. Crack jokes, but leave our media-men alone.