In part one of this Pearl ("The Facts"), I described certain events that played out in cyberspace over the last month. As you might expect given the high levels of emotion and sheer vitriol of the interchanges, I was personally affected. Heck, I was downright angry. Perhaps I was also foolish in that I allowed myself to be baited and wasted precious hours during a tough deadline-driven week posting rebuttals and trying to logically refute completely off-the-wall and unjustified attacks.

Given that I am a real, identifiable human being and my attackers were hiding behind pseudonyms, that was probably a mistake. In retrospect, it's clear that I was beating my head against an unyielding wall, a fact I belatedly recognized when I withdrew from the battlefield.

In the intervening weeks I have calmed down considerably. However, I felt that it was important to document the soap opera in this two-part Pearl, giving the debate a broader exposure than it would ever get buried inside that discussion board. Perhaps the exercise will also help identify the underlying dynamics and point the way towards a more constructive dialogue.

To that end, following find some random reflections drawn in part from current and recent events and in part from well-known Filipino commentators, philosophers, and historians. However, per my gonzo prerogative, I will conclude with some personal reflections and conclusions that may (God forbid) provoke the appearance of the all-powerful Darna. Watch out for random lightning bolts.

Basic books on Filipino culture (and a number of Pearl columns) emphasize just how sensitive Filipinos are and how important it is to avoid open criticism. I would refer you to such sources as Alfredo and Grace Roces' Culture Shock! Philippines, Theodore Gochenour's Considering Filipinos, or any of F. Lando Jocano's excellent intercultural books (in particular Filipino Worldview: Ethnography of Local Knowledge and Working with Filipinos: A Cross-Cultural Encounter.)

While I am always conscious of this issue in interpersonal relationships in the Philippines, I hadn't really thought that much about how it plays out in the broader context of intercultural debate. Now, however, the bruises incurred in the battles described in "1. The Facts" have made me acutely aware of how much Filipinos hate being criticized and (especially) how much they hate foreigners (or other Pinoys for that matter) being critical of the Philippines.

It's not much of a stretch to refer to it as an "onion skin" mentality.

For example...

The Probe Team: The Probe Team, a GMA news magazine and the longest running public affairs TV program in the country, also airs in Singapore. In early 2001, in prototypical reality television show format, certain stories dealt with sensitive topics: pedophilia in the provinces, the sex tourism business, the Payatas mountain of garbage, and college students dying in fraternity hazings. The new segments were accurate and reflected objective realities of life in the Philippines.

A group of OFWs promptly organized a vocal protest and did all they could to keep the show from being shown in the Lion City. Their bone of contention, of course, was that it made the Philippines look bad in the pristine city-state of Singapore. Why air dirty laundry when those things could be so easily ignored?

Live Show: In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I described the uproar that occurred in Manila when Jose Javier Reyes' cinema verite piece, Live Show (originally known as Toro) was released. This existential and engaging film told the sad story of young people whose extreme poverty led them to perform live sex on stage in order to survive.

The critics were all over the film, which was soon repressed with the blessing of Cardinal Sin and the devout Philippine President. Their argument was that the film encouraged promiscuity and painted an inappropriately sordid portrait. In reality, it was a well-done work of art that called attention to an unfortunate social reality. But that was not acceptable.

Claire Danes' "Ghastly Manila" remarks: About four years ago, Claire Danes came to Manila to film Brokedown Palace. After returning to the states, she made several not-very-flattering remarks about Manila in the pages of Vogue and Premiere magazines. Specifically, she described Manila as a "ghastly and weird city," said that the city "smelled like cockroaches", and noted that "rats were everywhere".

The whole country, led by the Manila City Council, was immediately inflamed and up in arms. There was a major move to ban all of Danes' films in Manila and her name is now considered synonymous with "Ugly American". Very few politicians or commentators were brave enough to note that Danes' comments were basically accurate and that something badly needs to be done about the state of the Philippines' capital city.

[Personal note] In my call center work I have met numerous potential international investors here on fact-finding trips. They come here to compare the Philippines to other alternatives for their offshore facilities. Although they are favorably impressed by the quality of telecommunications infrastructure and the motivated, English-speaking workers, they are uniformly turned off by the physical ugliness of Manila. In our recent call center roundtable at the Asian Institute of Management - attended by the major players in the industry, most of them high-level Filipino professionals from both public and private sector - one of the key policy issues identified for government attention was the need to beautify the area around NAIA, clean up the streets, and otherwise create a more pleasing environment for visiting investors. And how much more important for the tourism industry!

Danes was right. Her Filipinos critics may be correct that she was rude in her tone of expression, but they should at least acknowledge her point and commit themselves to doing something about it.

The Ambassador Speaks: A couple of weeks ago the relatively new (but highly experienced) American Ambassador Frank Riccardione spoke before Manila-based foreign correspondents. He was blunt in telling the reporters that corruption in the Philippines was widespread, particularly in the judiciary, and that such corruption was keeping foreign investors away in droves. Not exactly a news scoop, just the facts communicated directly and with a clear purpose in mind.

The reaction of Filipino politicians and columnists was immediate and explosive. Senator Manuel Villar called on Washington for Riccardione to resign. He acknowledged that corruption in government is bad, but stated that it's not really that big an issue for foreign investors (a statement inconsistent with numerous surveys of multinational businessmen in Manila). Representative Jun Lozada of Negros Occidental, Chair of the House foreign relations committee, was up in arms: "Can Philippine Ambassador del Rosario talk like that in Washington?" He went on to demand a formal apology from the US government, but added that "no amount of apology can undo the damage"

Senator Blas Ople (soon to be the new Foreign Secretary) demanded that the Ambassador personally apologize to GMA and the Filipino people. The Senator said that just because Riccardione happened to be the American ambassador didn't give him the right to speak out like a "two-cent radio commentator". Mr. Ople went on to state that, at the very least, Riccardione's remarks were discourteous to the President, especially given her support of the Bush administration's war on terror.

Just below the Philippine Star's front page feature reporting these remarks was another story with the headline "Gloria: Yes, corruption exists in RP". Seems that President Arroyo promptly admitted that every time they had spoken recently, Riccardione had mentioned the corruption issue and that, by the way, he was factually correct.

Although many local columnists accused Riccardione of being insensitive or unaware of diplomatic protocol, or of having laid an insensitivity egg, the inside story is that the message was almost certainly delivered at the behest of Washingon. Riccardione is far too savvy to have made an intercultural communications blunder of that magnitude. Instead, he was delivering a message from the American government that the Philippines needs to address the corruption issue if it is to continue to attract American multinational investment. Period.

But the substance of the vitally important message was buried in the deluge of protestations and rhetoric.

Damaged Culture? Fifteen years ago, James Fallows, Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly, journeyed to the Philippines. He was writing a series of features on Asian countries, and his article on the Philippines turned out to be a classic. His conclusion was that the Philippines had "degenerated into a war of every man against every other man". In his 1994 book Looking at the Sun, he went further:

"Individual Filipinos are at least as brave, kind and noble-spirited as individual Japanese, but their culture draws the boundaries of decent treatment much more narrowly. Because these boundaries are limited to the family or tribe, they exclude at any given moment 99 percent of the other people in the country. Because of this fragmentation, this lack of useful nationalism, people treat each other worse in the Philippines than in any other Asian country I have seen . . . the tradition of political corruption and cronyism, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the tribal fragmentation, the local élite's willingness to make a separate profitable peace with colonial powers - all reflect a feeble sense of national interest. Practically everything that is public in the Philippines seems neglected or abused."

Not surprisingly, Fallows has been a favorite American whipping boy of Filipino columnists and politicians ever since. He has been labeled an arrogant, know-it-all Yankee and has been figuratively burned at the stake time and time again.

More recently, however, some of the Philippines' leading intellectuals have revisited Fallows' critique and, perhaps reluctantly, are recognizing the validity of many of his points.

Francisco Sionil Jose is a well-known author and publisher who founded the Solidaridad publishing house. His journal Solidarity has set the tone for debates about current affairs, ideas, and the arts in th Philippines. He is also an accomplished novelist who has chosen to write in English rather than in the national language (Filipino/Tagalog) or his native Illocano.

Mr. Jose recently commented on Fallows at a luncheon hosted by RCBC and Ambassador T. Yuchengco. The question being asked was: Why are we poor? The theme of his talk was "our social and moral malaise." While not blaming everything on colonialism, he stressed that the Spanish social system was based on exploiting the masses and that Filipino élites and peasants alike had internalized that type of social relations. Among his comments were: "we are a colony of our own elite" and "the culture of poverty is self-perpetuating". Jose was also critical of the Filipino's eternal search for status symbols and the culture of ostentation that characterizes Filipino elites (not to mention Filipino-Americans - see "Incendiary Conclusion" below).

To quote the esteemed Mr. Jose:

"We are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings. We condone cronyism and corruption and we do not ostracize or punish the crooks in our midst. Both cronyism and corruption are wasteful but we allow their practice because our loyalty is to family or friend, not to the larger good . . . I am not looking for a foreign power for us to challenge. But we have a real and insidious enemy that we must vanquish, and this enemy is worse that the intransigence of any foreign power. We are our own enemy. And we must have the courage, the will, to change ourselves."

Moving towards the diaspora. Here, I will simply quote from E. San Juan, Jr.'s masterful From Exile to Diaspora: Versions of the Filipino Experience in the United States:

"There is a general sense of being neither this nor that, of sharing something of the Pacific Islands, of being heavily influenced by Spanish and American cultures, and of perceiving only a remote historical relationship with the major civilizations of Asia. If asked what the people of the Philippines are, the Filipino answer may well be: 'we are ourselves.'"

"It is not a joke to say that the Philippines, an economic basket case during the last decade of Marcos' despotic rule, produces every year thousands of doctors, nurses, scientists, and engineers for the world market. As exchangeable commodities, many of them immediately head for the United States - note that there are several million 'warm body exports' now inhabiting the Middle East and Europe - while in the Philippines where 80% of the people are poor and 30% of the children malnourished, most towns and village don't have any decent medical/health care (not to mention other vital social services) to sustain a decent quality of life for all its citizens. For the new settlers, this sorry plight is now either erased from memory or set aside for retrieval in occasions when there is a need to justify why they left the homeland."

Well, we come now to the bottom line.

It seems that I have written a two-part Pearl, the longest in history, and all because of a rather minor dust-up in cyberspace. The discussion thread in question will soon be buried in the archives, no real injuries were incurred, and the anonymous parties involved will move on with their lives (which I assume will continue to involve spending endless hours insulting one another on the worldwide web).

I don't claim to be able to fully integrate the experience. I would, however, note the following.

1. As is well-known, Filipinos don't like confrontation and prefer to communicate indirectly. The web, however, allows anonymity and a forum like pinoyexchange provides a great way of letting off steam and displacing life's frustrations. I would guess that Madcat and her friends deeply resent Americans, may have had run-ins with overbearing Yankee consultants, or have problems in their own lives that they cope with by venting on the internet. And given the anonymity factor, there's no need to be nice or polite, whether to fellow Pinoys or intrusive Kanos.
2. The incredible sensitivity of these cultural debates seems to me to be firmly rooted in the "four centuries in a convent and fifty years in Hollywood" theme. In Halo-Halo Culture I allude to scenes in the movie Tatarin that metaphorically depict the tensions between Malay culture, Spanish Catholicism, and American materialism. One also has to factor in the Chinese influence, as well as the conflicts and resentments among different Filipino ethnic/linguistic groups (i.e., Tagalogs vs. Ilocanos vs. Cebuanos etc.) Filipinos have historically identified more with their regions and cultural groups than they have with the Filipino nation (which returns you to the Fallows argument, I suppose).
3. This complex multicultural confusion was described quite aptly by Father Jaime Bulatao, a psychologist, as "split-level Christianity." Just think of the Filipino who hues to the Roman Catholic party line and goes to weekly confession, only to regularly lose all his wages at the weekly cockfight and verbally and physically abuse his wife. She in turn is torn between allegiance to the cross and her resentment of her husband's unfaithfulness, which she tries to overcome by having the village mangkukulam (roughly "witch doctor") cast the appropriate spells on him.

I think this little adventure should also be seen in terms of the Filipino diaspora and the conflicted feelings of Filipinos now scattered around the globe. It would appear that Madcat and her cronies are primarily California Fil-Ams, although I can't be sure given their refusal to identify themselves. However, I recognized many attitudes and messages that I have been exposed to during my two decades married into a Filipino family and 15 years in LA when we were deeply involved with Fil-Am family, communities, and businesses.

I was always amazed by the clannishness and Spanish-derived arrogance, not to mention the love of parties, heavy food, impressive edifices, and weekend trips to Vegas. These traits can be captured in the terms of pasikatan (living it up, regardless of the burden of escalating credit card bills and impending bankruptcy), and makaisa (taking undue advantage of others by asking favors or otherwise imposing onself). All too often I have observed human tragedy associated with cultural dislocation and confusion, alienation, and blind preoccupation with chasing material possessions, even if it meant working two jobs and never having any time to spend with the kids. Many Fil-Am families in LA have children with significant drug problems or who commit suicide, while others disintegrate under the pressure. While not true of all, it is true of far too many.

Let me conclude by asking that readers take this savage journey to the heart of the Pinoy dream in the spirit in which it was intended - as an objective portrait of certain events in cyberspace and a sincere effort to understand what transpired. And I would also request that the FOP cavalry be standing by should Darna magically explode onto the scene from the planet Marte to punish me for my sins.