Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

The idea was to bring the whole world to St. Louis, Missouri.  That world included the major civilizations of east and west, and the remaining savage societies that were then undergoing, to western eyes, the civilizing tutelage of colonialism.  The 1904 World’s Fair opened on April 30 and closed seven months later on December 1, … Read more

St. Louis, Missouri.  A “Seinfeld” election is an election about nothing, precisely how one political analyst saw the 1998 US midterm election. The allusion, so very American, would not be lost on Filipino fans of the Jerry Seinfeld show, a hilarious sitcom that recruits the most powerful emotions in the name of the most insignificant … Read more

Denver, Colorado.   The great American election has eluded me as successfully as the great American cuisine.  I just cannot find it in the streets.  What I have seen much of are the ads on TV.  The evening newscasts are full of them, and perhaps to many Americans, these political ads constitute the sum total of … Read more

Dresden.    When German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visits Manila this week, he and President Ramos will likely tap the now exhausted vocabulary of  people power to establish a common ground for their dialogue.  Whatever EDSA meant to Filipinos in 1986, it roughly corresponds to the symbolism of the Berlin Wall’s collapse for the Germans in 1989.  … Read more

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

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

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

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

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

“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