Talk About A Slow News Day

29Apr07

From the headlines of the Philippine Daily Inquirer,

Pinoys cooked adobo where killer lived

By Romeo E. Capuno Jr.
Inquirer
Last updated 03:19am (Mla time) 04/28/2007

BLACKSBURG, Virginia—Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech student who shot more than 30 people, lived on the second floor of Harper Hall, where members of the Filipino Students Association (FSA) had cooked adobo and pancit three days before the massacre on April 16.

Not to degrade anyone who was actually a victim of the tragedy, but I always find it funny whenever there’s an example of the Filipino tendency to always be involved in Really Really Important Matters.

Case in point, suddenly the fact that a bunch of filipino students were enrolled in Virginia Tech is now headline worthy news.

Before that, while the First Gentleman was having his heart issues, people were storming into hospitals claiming that they had the same ailment that he had.

It’s funny because it’s always irrational and always so very very contrived, like the evil twin of what Ruben Nepales calls “The Filipino Connection“. Which, according to him, is:

a comment or reply from a Hollywood celeb, a line from a movie, TV show, stage play, musical or anything that has to do with the Philippines

Whereas a Filipino Connection always ushers in at least a small sense of pride, this ugly twin always elicits a groan.

Then again, it’s nevertheless amusing because it says a lot about the melodrama that’s intrinsic in our culture.

By the way, that Inquirer headline above? Read through it. It’s actually a reaction of one Filipino student about the Virgina Tech shootings. That first paragraph doesn’t have anything else to do with the rest of that article.

To wit: a very subjective, very emotional, and very opinionated piece about a tragedy is now what we(or at least, PDI) call headline news.

Hilarious.

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