Ahh...Mocha

Her name is Margaux, spelled like the name of the late actress Margaux Hemingway, granddaughter of one of my favorite writers Ernest Hemingway. But she is better known by her showbiz name Mocha, spelled like the Arabian coffee, or the coffee mixed with either cocoa or chocolate. Which incidentally is also the name of the sexy singing and dancing group she heads, the Mocha Girls.

I am referring to the controversial Margaux “Mocha” Uson, whom President Rodrigo Duterte recently appointed assistant secretary of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), the office headed by the once controversial and now silent Secretary Martin Andanar.

I checked with the website pcoo.gov.ph and the PCOO’s listed missions are:

--To serve as the primary vehicle for consciousness-raising, constituency-building, and social mobilization in support of the policies, programs, and projects of the Presidency.

--To serve as a tool for informing, educating, enlightening the citizenry about matters of national importance for inspiring the citizenry to deepen their civic engagement.

Before her appointment to the PCOO, Mocha was first deployed by the President to the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), apparently because of her showbiz links. But the MTRCB position turned out to be too big and the task too complicated for her. Her limits was exposed when she zeroed in on an ABS-CBN show some of whose scenes she described as softporn, which actually wasn’t. She obviously got lost in the intellectual discussion on art vs. porn.

With her appointment as PCOO asec, Mocha will fortunately be out of the MTRCB and will be where she could be more useful for the Duterte administration—so like the turtle thrown into the lake. Love her or hate her, the fact remains that she is a popular pro-Duterte blogger and could mobilize her 5 million blog “likers” in “support of the policies, programs and projects of the Presidency.”

Okay, I don’t like Mocha because, in her defense of the then candidate Duterte and now the Duterte administration, she became the purveyor of halftruths, lies and, often, fake news. Her attacks on Vice President Leni Robredo were vicious and unenlightened. For example, when asked by GMA’s Winnie Monsod what is her basis for calling for Robredo’s impeachment, she answered: “Dahil plastic sya.”

This I think is the reason for the viciousness by which her critics greeted her appointment to the PCOO. (By the way, a rappler.com fast facts on Mocha Uson said that her pay would be equivalent to a monthly basic gross salary of at least P106,454, excluding allowances and bonuses.) The criticism is okay for me but not the vileness. For how can Mocha’s critics be different from her when they dwell in the same gutter?

In one scene from the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Aftermath,” his character, Roman Melnyk, gets confronted by the son of the man he blamed for the death of his wife and child in an airplane crash. That son saw his father die in Melnyk’s hands and was out for revenge. Melnyk says “sorry” even as he waits for the young man to pull the trigger. He does not.