UPDATED: I Pity the Fool

(UPDATED and BUMPED up again: To be fair and Balanced, I present the other side on the Malu Fernandez debate)

Schumey takes a Manila Standard Today columnist to task. You've heard of the term "ugly Americans". Well, meron ring "Ugly Filipino" sa atin.

UPDATE: I think it's okay to criticize and condemn ms. malu fernandez, but i'm not in favor of getting her fired. getting her fired let's her off the hook too easily. baka maging martyr pa siya.

i'd rather see her deal with the anger, ridicule and accusations of being a bigot every day habang nasa MST siya. She can say whatever she wants in MST. Free speech rights niya yan. But we too have freedom of speech to show our disgust and contempt for her.

UPDATE: Paolo Mendoza defends Fernandez (one of the few I think) and calls those who reacted negatively to Ms. Fernandez hypocrites. There's a little bit of "Malu Fernandez" in all of us raw, he said. Then he ended with the quote, "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."

Heh.

UDPATE: Didn't know Malu Fernandez is Migz Zubiri's aunt. Plus this from CVJ:

As expected, she and like-minded individuals would rationalize that they are just 'being real'. Of course, such an excuse is self-serving because facing reality in its fullness would require admitting to themselves that they are grotesque specimens of humanity.

Ms. Fernandez's "GET REAL" mentality reminds me of this guy.

UPDATE: I wonder if the Malu Fernandez issue will cross over to the Mainstream Media. so far kasi, sa internets pa lang ito pinag-uusapan. So far, wala pang article sa Google News reacting to the Malu Blogstorm.

UPDATE: To be fair and balanced, here's the other side of the Malu Fernandez debate:

From Bencard, who uses the example of blacks calling each other "niggers":

i’m not trying to defend fernandez, i think what she wrote about ofws was reprehensible. but like me, most of the commenters here don’t know her as a person (kg claims this is the first time she heard of her). how can these people judge her with such venom and putrid language? what does her looks, body size, clothing, make-up, etc. anything to do with her article, detestable though it may be?

blacks often call each other “nigger” and they just laugh it off. seldom do they take offense in that case, unlike when someone other than another black (whites, especially) do it wherein they would surely make a federal case out of it, if not resort to physical violence.

as a filipino herself, i see fernandez as trying to be self-deprecating - maybe even thinking that a good number of her own kind shares her observation. her fault lies in not realizing that she was committing the worst kind of political incorrectness - insult a class she thinks is lower than her’s.

Blacks do sometimes call other blacks "niggers". I guess it's a question of intention or how they intended to use the term. What was Malu's intention when she was writing (and defending) those articles of hers? Btw, I think this issue is not about race, bencard. It's all about economics. Economic status pala. Malu is of the upper middle class status who has a low opinion of OFWs and poor working-class Filipinos.

Trosp wrote:

What I found out after reading her key statements is she was just relaying observations the way she was seeing it. I didn’t even see any malice in the way she has expressed those observations and her feelings towards them. (Perhaps, she could have just keep it to herself so as not to be marked as a bigot. But then she is a writer.)

And from Cathcath, on why boycotting the newspaper is a bad idea too:

I agree with Manolo and that was my stand too when I joined the call of Nick to condemn the lady columnist and her article. As I have said, it is not the columnist who’s going to suffer when the paper loses revenues because of the boycott. The small workers would be the first in line when there is downsizing. There are also thousands of newspaper boys (never mind the distributors, they have other magazines to sell) who will be affected.

It’s not Malu’s bread and butter btw. She got a boutique.

If that’s how cathcath puts it, then I’d rather see Malu fired na lang instead of the newspaper boys losing their jobs over Malu’s bigotry.

UPDATE: Good idea from Ella. OFWs take out an ad vs. Ms. Fernandez.

UPDATE: I do remember 4 prominent US journalists and personalities resigning because their actions or comments sparked a controversy that started small in the blogosphere and slowly but surely (albeit sometimes reluctantly) got picked up by the major media. One thing all of the examples have in common is that the issues and controversy were driven primarily by blogs.

- Trent Lott over his Strom Thurmond comment, resigned as Senate Majority Leader. Andrew Sullivan was one of the first to call him out.

- Jayson Blair, along with NYT Editor in Chief Howell Raines and NYT Managing editor Gerald Boyd. The Raines firing was a big deal. Not often do you see a executive editor of a major newspaper getting fired. In this case, the biggest newspaper in the world.

- Dan Rather, after using forged documents to tar Bush re his stint in the Texas Air National Guard in 60 minutes a few weeks before the November 2004 elections.

- Eason Jordan - CNN's chief news exec (the guy who helped build CNN) resigned over his comments na the US soldiers were deliberately targetting media people raw, without providing proof or backing it up. He also wrote a controversial op-ed piece in the NYT back in apr 2003 called "The News We Kept to Ourselves" re Iraq and Saddam.