A tattoed president?  

In my small collection of Long Playing (LP) vinyls, there is a record entitled The Rose Tattoo, sung by Perry Como. This song, composed by Harry Warren (music) and written by Jack Brooks (lyrics) is one of my favorites. In fact, I happily reminisce this well-known anecdote in Philippine entertainment history related to this beautiful musical piece. When Filipino singer Diomedes Maturan sang this song, Perry Como himself was briefly confused. He thought it was he singing “The Rose Tattoo." 

A tattoo is a permanent design, symbol or text marked on a person’s skin. It is created by injecting colored pigments into the dermis layer. The oldest direct evidence of human tattooing was found on a mummy discovered in the Italian-Austrian Alps in 1991, who lived around 3,300 BCE and bore 61 carbon-based tattoos. Archaeologists called that mummy “Otzi the Iceman.”

I read from the Internet that tattooing had varied interpretations in ancient times. For example, according to the Greek writer Herodotus, tattoos were a mark of nobility among the Thracian and Scythian peoples. In contrast, Romans used tattoos ("stigmata") specifically to mark criminals, prisoners of war and slaves. For ancient Egyptians, tattoos were the mark of prostitutes or were meant to protect the women against sexually transmitted diseases.

There is no historical record or evidence though that some great men, past or present, like Aristotle, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Lee Kwan Yew, just to name five, had tattoos on their bodies. In comparison, the internet reported that there is substantial evidence that members of various Mafia and organized crime groups around the world tattooed their bodies, though the prevalence, style, and meaning varied significantly between organizations. 

The Yakuza, perhaps the most famous organized crime group in Japan had the bodies of their leaders and members marked with tattoos. It is also a well-documented phenomenon in Soviet criminal history that Soviet prisoners and inmates often tattooed portraits of Lenin (and Stalin) on their chests or backs.

I needed to do a little researching into tattoos when I saw a social media posting where Mr. Sebastian “Baste” Duterte addressed an obviously political crowd in Davao City. His guttural expression, frankly speaking, sounded better than his father’s. Mayor Baste was clad in a tight-fitting shirt although I had no idea that he only attempted to project a degree of masculinity. But, I noticed that his neck and his arms were heavily tattooed quite unlike Aristotle, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Lee Kwan. I would not want to assume that he wanted to show instead his tattoos as the Mafia, the Yakuza and the Soviet prisoners loved to print their bodies with.

In the social media post accompanying the Baste Duterte elocution, there was shown Senator Robinhood Padilla. It was my understanding that Mayor Baste and Senator Robin shared the same podium during the launching of this new political group called Reform Alliance for Good Governance and Accountability (RAGE). I was amused to hear him saying a Sara Duterte would be our president in 2028 and Mayor Baste, the next president in 2034. Well, they apparently are comrades-in-arms. Was it not that sometime in September 2017, Robin Padilla mentioned having a "dragon tattoo"? The actor then claimed that this tattoo was the reason he was barred from leaving the country amid discussions about tattoos allegedly linked to organized crime groups (triads).

After viewing the Baste/Robin posts, I played Perry Como’s The Rose Tattoo and a juxtapulation of the lyrics sounded like “He wore the xx tattoo. xx Like fools and dreamers do xxx.”