Imbecile association

My mother and I came to metaphorical blows over the use of the insult "imbecile" as applied against the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Pantaleon Alvarez. Mom, who is 80-something, and a grandmother to a dozen beautiful specimens of our genetic pool, has pretty strong views, as she was a witness to politicians of many generations and ilks, even eeks.

This came about, you will remember, when a young whippersnapper of a lawyer named Mandy Anderson, then working for the Bureau of Customs, suddenly found herself in the firing sights of Congressmen posting in her private Facebook account that, due to Alvarez's announcement about dissolving the Court of Appeals, he was an imbecile.

As a lover of freedom of speech and the ability to criticize government, even if I did not want to use "imbecile" as my descriptor of choice, I defended Anderson's constitutional right to critique Alvarez. My mother, on the other hand, believed that imbeciles and other sundry insults should have no place in polite society, and a member of the distinguished House, such as Alvarez, should always be accorded due courtesy.

In recent posts I see on the news and the web, though, it seems Alvarez and "imbecile" are beginning to be inseparable twins.

Take for example the story of Alvarez taking to task Human Rights Commissioner Chito Gascon for not doing his job by protecting private citizens from crimes, or another way to look at it, by protecting criminals against police forces who only want to protect private citizens. The immediate reaction to Alvarez, I observed on social media, was that he was an imbecile.

Then news broke out about how, in the deliberations for the government's annual budget, the

House of Representatives granted only a thousand-peso budget to the Commission of Human Rights. The reported reason for this budget cut was the displeasure of Congress over the same reason: how the chairman was supposedly not doing his job. "Imbecile" and "Alvarez" flew into the maelstrom of the "discussion".

Even after Congress restored the Commission's budget (although I don't know how that happened yet, as I'm behind my news), one angry lawyer still managed to stick imbecile in there, taking to task Alvarez for having started this whole brouhaha in the first place.

Indeed, if I google these two words of imbecile and his name, I am immediately led by the search engine to Alvarez.

Alvarez needs to redeem himself quickly if he wants to leave some other social media legacy. It's probably not high up there in the planes of his consciousness, as men and women from his generation (like my mother) probably don't care how they are portrayed in social media. But the reality is future generations will be too lazy to dig through musty Congressional records and will want the quick fix that a search engine can bring. And if imbecile is what is tacked on to Alvarez, then the danger is that is what he will be forevermore known for.

Kim Kardashian managed to obliterate her sex video scandal somehow. Monica Lewinsky has still not managed the same escape. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had his wife to thank for turning the spotlight away from him, despite many attempts to refocus it on his pecker's peccadillos. What about Alvarez's link to imbecile?

Less than a couple of years more to run for Alvarez's term, although he could of course run for more terms or other positions. Plenty of opportunities for the Speaker to overlay this imbecilic shade with far loftier accomplishments. Meanwhile, my mother waits to be vindicated.

‘Alvarez needs to redeem himself quickly if he wants to leave some other

social media legacy.’