THAT KRIS AND JOEY THING

While everybody was praising Kris Aquino for her courage to tell the "truth" about what happened between her and her ex-lover Joey Marquez, I thought I was the lone voice in the wilderness. But yesterday, I found one who shared the same opinion with me. Yesterday's column of Conrado de Quiros of the Philippine Daily Inquirer proved that I am not alone in sharing my views against Kris and this whole issue (you can check my September 24 entry). Here's what de Quiros said:

Ambivalence
Posted:11:09 PM (Manila Time) | Sept. 28, 2003
By Conrado de Quiros



LAST year, I wrote about Kris Aquino. She had just become the cynosure of the nation's eyes for making her affection for Joey Marquez public. My reason for doing so was that I was bothered by the jokes about it. Though some of the jokes were really funny -- we Filipinos are past masters at gallows humor, and we get sharper the more the noose tightens around our necks. They were also pretty cruel. Or indeed sprung from very wrong premises.

I was particularly uncomfortable about the ones that suggested promiscuity on her part. There was no lack of cheap shots made on the words "Hindi ka nagiisa" and "The Filipino is worth dying for." There was a larger issue at stake there, I thought, which was the double standards we held about the proper behavior of men and women. We had just had a president who did not particularly mind parading his mistresses and conquests before the world, yet no one made any bones about it. Except Jaime Cardinal Sin, and everyone thought him puritan. There were jokes about his incontinence to be sure, but they were not cruel, they were admiring. When Kris, on the other hand, gushed out her affection for someone against all opposition -- her family's chief of them -- the world came down on her.

The reactions I got from friends and readers were: one, that it wasn't the promiscuity people were making fun of, it was Kris' penchant for exhibitionism; and, two, why did I have to fiddle around while Rome burned? The first I don't buy: the underlying premise of many of the jokes was not scorn for Kris' loudness but her presumed "kalandian", a judgment never made about men. The second doesn't bother me. I write about things I feel strongly about, whether others think them important or not. If I can't be true to myself, I can't be true to the public.

This time, however, I am tremendously loath to write about Kris' -- or Joey Marquez's -- current predicament. One would think it would be easier because the women's groups have already given it a national-interest spin: Kris should be congratulated for making domestic violence public. That should encourage battered wives to come out and seek redress, or be rescued from their plight. If true, I myself would join the chorus and sing my praises, too.

But that is the first thing that bothers me about this issue, the rush to judgment. I myself do not particularly like Joey Marquez. And while I am infinitely tolerant of the foibles of love -- those who insist the young should marry, or settle down, wisely have either not been in love or have forgotten how they themselves rushed in where angels fear to tread; it is always a case of temporary insanity, well, sometimes permanent -- I can't understand how any woman couldn't have sensed the danger a mile away. Anybody who has seen an episode of "Palibhasa Lalake" -- the title says it all-couldn't have failed to spot the machismo. I don't mean by this the penchant for fickleness (a lot of fickle men are not macho), but the attitude of being God's gift to women. The kind (like Robin Padilla) that says such patronizing things as "Ang babae ay di binubugbog kundi niroromansa."

But having said that, I don't know that naturally makes Marquez guilty as charged. Is it possible that someone entertaining political ambitions would beat up a partner who is not just the daughter of the most prominent citizen of this country but is one of its most popular show-biz personalities? Well, stranger things have happened and there's no telling what machismo can do. But until that is proven, I don't see why I should join the lynch mob.

That is the second thing that bothers me about this: the uses of the media for whipping up a frenzy. Unlike Maria Teresa Carlson, who was at the mercy of her oppressor, Kris is not. She is a powerful person in her own right in this television-addled country, having several shows in ABS-CBN. She is not the underdog in this case. Maybe it's true, as she says, that Marquez is merely inventing her having said she would ruin him because she is popular and people are apt to believe her, but the way she is going on about this, she is giving credence to his accusation. She is turning Marquez into a sympathetic figure by making him the object of a media mugging. That is assault and battery, too, and it is happening right before our eyes.

The way she and Korina Sanchez have violated every canon of media ethics, chief of them maintaining a degree of objectivity and giving the other side a chance to say his piece, is enough to embarrass any self-respecting journalist. One would imagine that if Kris had learned any lesson in life, it would be that when you try to silence someone by an excessive use of force, he speaks with the force of a thousand tongues.

What this incontinent display of power is bound to encourage is not more battered women to come out and tell all but more idiots in the media to oppress their enemies, particularly those who cannot fight back.

The last thing that bothers me about this issue is our utter lack of sense of proportion, our infinite capacity to dwell on these things. Rome is burning, or this country is. I feel the charge of fiddling more sharply in this case, and my only excuse is that a dissenting voice must be heard here. Of course, other countries are prey to the snares of the Pied Piper, too-even England waxed show biz over the death of Diana whose contribution in life were to prove more interesting than the man she married. But we do it to outrageous lengths. Rico Yan dies and we make a saint of him. Ruffa Gutierrez marries and we want to follow every step of her pregnancy. Kris Aquino and Joey Marquez fight, and we stop the world.

A country of slaves deserves tyrants. A country of simpletons deserves F4. And the Kris and Joey show.