B is for bunkum…

THERE is a suggestion from Gloria Diaz for Maxine Medina to get the services of an interpreter.

It apparently was made over talk that Medina, the Philippines’ candidate to this year’s Miss Universe beauty pageant, which Miss Diaz won in 1969, is not conversant in the English language.

So are President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesmen and other alter egos who speak in Greek from the Tower of Babel.

It ain’t broke but these Malacañang guys from Andanar to Yasay, among others manning the fort, insist on fixing it, that is, every word that the President throws to the media.

And when all their scholarly and intellectual meanderings fail to save their skin, they blame reporters and editors for allegedly distorting what Duterte said.

How these people could muster the nerve to accuse the press of making up what it prints or broadcasts is beyond us, at least among most of the members of the Fourth Estate who swear by the 5 Ws and 1 H on top of responsible journalism.

It has escaped them that the President’s statements need not be defended all the time because he says what he says,

When Duterte, for example, said that he can unilaterally declare martial law and to hell with Congress and the Supreme Court, Andanar and Yasay led the parade of the deaf, the blind and the mute in whacking the media for allegedly twisting the President’s statement on imposing military rule.

Maybe, the President’s men wanted to hear reporters and editors say, “How nice of Mr. Duterte to elucidate lucidly and eloquently that he will surely declare martial law and we are waiting with bated breath for him to do so at the soonest possible time, so help him, God!” It doesn’t work that way, buster. The media and their practitioners should at all times be adversarial, otherwise they might as well write about and edit stories on the President’s fashion sense or his English fluency.

Of course, self- respecting reporters or editors will have no choice to react in kind if Palace factotums treat them like they belong to a bunch of hacks and not that the Philippine media is sampaguita- white like the Philippine National Police is virginally chaste like senior police officer Ricky Santa Isabel or the alleged killers in uniform of Albuera ( Leyte) Mayor Roland Espinosa.

In a January 18 statement, which we support, the Malacañang Press Corps said, “We take exception to the statement of Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar accusing the media of ‘misreporting’ President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement about martial law.”

It added, “The media has no obligation to please or satisfy its sources because its loyalty is to the citizens, those who will be affected by the actions of the people who are more powerful than them.”

Apparently, the misplaced loyalty of Andanar and Yasay is to the President, who in so many words has said that he owes where and what he is now to the people.

Andanar, in particular, has a big job waiting for him when he, along with Esperon, represents Duterte in the inauguration of Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.

If, by chance, Trump slips in his inaugural address and bad-mouths the President of the Philippines, expect the Cabinet member Martin to defend the Donald of The Apprentice fame from the Philippine media blowing out of proportion the Democrat’s take on whatever he fancies.

Better still for Andanar to get an interpreter to make sense of whatever Trump dishes out.

A is for Andanar, B is for bunkum…