America after Monica

Washington, D.C.    One of the first things that a visitor to this US capital city asks to see is the White House, the official residence of the US president.  Nowadays, he may also ask where the Oval Office is. It is of course impossible to get a view of the narrow corridor where Monica Lewinsky … Read more

Rethinking sociology

I do not know what it is about taking a break when you are past the half-century mark.  Events seem to conspire to make it almost total. Last week, I said goodbye to television.  Now, by an interesting coincidence, I am also taking a leave from teaching.  Thus I am about to embark on a … Read more

Goodbye to television

I am taping the last episode of my TV program “Public Life” this coming week.  It will have only two guests: my director Marilou DiazAbaya and myself.  Together we will try to analyze what this fascinating medium has taught us over the last 12 years.  After that, Marilou will go on to make more films, … Read more

Taking on Mahathir

President Estrada was right to have a view on Mahathir’s style of governance and to express it as a personal opinion.  But it would be wrong for him to snub the Kuala Lumpur Apec summit as a way of protesting the detention of his “good friend” Anwar, the former deputy prime minister. It is certainly … Read more

Anwar’s generation

Watching Malaysia’s Mahathir dismiss and jail Anwar Ibrahim, his intended successor until a few weeks ago, brings me back to 1983. Anwar’s ouster is the equivalent of Ninoy’s assassination.  It took three years after Ninoy’s death for the middle class in the Philippines to realize what was happening and to decide what they were capable … Read more

Truth and politics in America

“Suppose we want truth,” writes Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, “why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?” Philosophers have concerned themselves basically with two sorts of issues: the truth about the world and the conditions by which the truth can be known.  Nietzsche says they presume the value of truth. “There is no … Read more

Prisons

A visit to Muntinlupa the other day in connection with a TV documentary I am doing on prison life turned into a review of the screaming headlines of the past decade.  Like the “public morality lesson” that punishment was meant to be in the Classical Age, the New Bilibid Prison became for me a book … Read more

Postmodern

When a person marries for romantic love, that’s modern.  When children marry the individuals chosen for them by their parents,  that’s traditional or premodern.  But when two people,  total strangers to one another, get married after being paired by a radio program, we say that’s probably postmodern. A couple in Sydney, Australia did just that … Read more

Can public figures have a private life?

On a visit to Jolo not too long ago, I sat in a huge social hall with then newly-elected ARMM Governor Nur Misuari as he attended to the crowd that had stayed up all night waiting to see him.  There must have been about a thousand people in that rundown building that served as his … Read more

The functions of fraternities

The death of UP student Alex Icasiano from severe hazing by members of the Alpha Phi Beta fraternity has once more focused attention on the violence that seems to inhere in the culture of fraternities.  The violence comes in the form of brutal initiation rites and murderous rumbles so contradictory to the values of brotherhood … Read more