NEVER HAVE politics, governance and public discourse have gone this low, sliding down the nether region of the human anatomy. It didn’t have to, except that toilet humor has been the default substitute for any intelligence discussion or debate on issues that involve public welfare these days.
How jabbing the President with the anti-COVID vaccine (no brand disclosure, to be sure) has gone down from the arm to the arse is not an issue of science or common sense. It’s politics going haywire.
If given a choice, and there are no ifs or butts about it, the Malacanang principal tenant, whose lease is about to run out, would prefer to do it in private, please. Why it is so when world leaders have done it publicly—no sweat– is not a mystery. He wants the jabbing done on his butt, and so goes the rest of the simple logic. Butt out but no camera, TV or otherwise ,to record a political milestone, even if that would mean being the iconic Third World poster boy for pandemic inoculation.
He could have assigned his choice of cinematic director, Brilliante or Bernal, to choose a sexy angle when the shot is done, and maybe the nation would be the better for it, given the huge chunk of the populace dreadful of the needle, or not too confident of the vaccine, or plain distrustful of the agency. A wide-angle shutter is not advisable.
But the buck stops there, and that should settle it. No way, Juan.
In the meantime, people are asking: what’s wrong with the President’s behind, anyway?
Health-wise, it isn’t probably a big deal, notwithstanding the not-so-curious insistence of the opposition for the President to make his state of health public. On second thought, the rump may expose his political risk. What risk? William Shakespeare didn’t think there was any.
Shakespeare was probably thinking of a political office, such as the chief executive’s, as a chair. “It’s like a barber’s chair that fits all buttocks, the pin-buttock, the quatch buttock, the brawn buttock or any buttock.” Because, it’s been said, you’re not your butt.
So , in fairness, those who put the President in his executive chair really made no mistake, if Shakespeare’s logic is followed. In politics, any buttock, regardless of color, shape, size and sensitivity, of the lack of it, will do. The problem, according to John Stuart Mills, in a democracy or representative government, someone with deficit upstairs may be elected. This was validated by a recent event in the United States where the outgoing president went bonkers and brought American democracy to the brink. What a timely warning!
But why doesn’t the President want his people to have peek at his butt?
There can be two plausible reasons: 1) people might find out who’s habitually kissing it and 2) Chel Diokno might get his vengeance, or his nemesis, the comeuppance. With the advance in forensic science, it can easily be determined whose lips run right smack into the unholy grail at the Pasig River. Prime suspects are members of the Cabinet, no brainer there. As for Chel Diokno, it’s true that there is time for everything under heaven. Now is his window to go to town with somebody who made fun of his buck teeth. That’s nothing compared to a misshapen butt or a wrinkled one, or worse. An indirect challenge, if not contempt, to the President, was Sen. Richard Gordon’s categorical commitment that he would be willing to get vaccinated in public along with other national leaders. Of course, his buttock could easily answer the question of the wicked queen in Snow White and the Seven Small Guys, pleasantly. Mirror,mirror on the wall, who’s got the better butt of all.
A fair warning to butt idolaters: Once upon a time, Niccolo Machiavelli thought of brownnosing – the equivalent of butt kissing – the rising Lorenzo Medici to keep himself in in power and privilege. He wrote an how-to manual on politics, the forerunner of the modern do-it-yourself (DIY) with his prospective patron in mind.
In his book ‘ The Prince’, this is his preface to Lorenzo: ‘Your Highness, accept this little gift in the spirit with which I sent it. If you will diligently read and consider it, you will detect in it one of my deepest desires, which is that you will come to that greatness which fortune and your own qualities promise you.”
Years later, Machiavelli was dismissed by his idol, tortured and exiled in a rustic village to ponder on his ironic fate. So much about butt kissing. The moral: be careful what you wish for. Or kiss.
The Greek philosopher Plato had warned that despots would always be surrounded by yes- men and enablers, in other words, arse wipers. It’s an untidy, dicey job. But a wag has found out that the COVID 19 pandemic has made abstaining from butt wiping fashionable. Blessing in disguise?
In the meantime, pandemic or not, issues of corruption have elevated the country again in the horror list. Translation: thePresident’s butt should be the least of our concern. As one C.B. Lee pointed out, we can’t just sit on our behinds and not live our lives while we’re trying to expose a corrupt government.
Or, for that matter, let bullies in uniform spank some people’s butts and call them red. It’s a good thing the avuncular Delfin Lorenzana, the odd man in this dispensation, appreciates the value of the woodshed. Some lessons need to be learned the hard, butt way. More butt kissers need heavy spanking — in the butt.
