june 20, 2003 in the name of ratings

I was told that some legal wranglings are in the works against the ABS-CBN Network in connection with the Katya Santos “breast popping” incident a few days ago. This presumably has nothing to do with the network’s suspension of Willie Revillame and John Estrada for, I suppose, the same “misdeameanor” for which they were previously suspended. (I’m sorry, but hard as I tried, I never got to spend one whole hour watching MTB—my gosh, I don’t even know what this now stands for. And this not only because I cannot stand its hosts, but because of Mahal. I will elaborate later on.) What this tells us is that, while seemingly unrelated to each other, these two incidents stem from one common source – SEX. (My law partner said this afternoon that he’s tired of being a lawyer. I told him I had the same feeling. “I wish,” I said, “plain housewife na lang ako..” To which, my partner said: “Di ba pwedeng puro sex na lang?”).

Just last week, allegations of sexual harassment were thrown against a high-ranking church official. Even GMA-7 I think is not spared from a morality investigation—you know, because of the sex bomb dancers’ daily gyration and those “spaghetting pababa/pataas” dance aerobics. It seems the showbiz industry is alive again. It’s been a while since any interesting event has happened in showbiz. The Aleck Bovick brouhaha did not quite stir any hornet’s nest, except of course, prompt Ara Mina to say some of her thoughts about not winning the best actress award for “Mano Po.”

If you ask me, ABS-CBN’s greater sin (of course it redeemed itself when it did not re-hire Revillame as MTB host) is making that teeny weeny of an actress (?) named Mahal a mascot to be made fun of by the MTB hosts. I saw her during one MTB episode while having lunch at our building’s cafeteria. As if that was not enough, MTB even hired her clone. One Mahal is not exactly tasteful, but two? Que horror! (I learned later on that the clone was actually a male).

The MTB bigwig who brought up the idea of Mahal twins co-hosting the show should be executed by musketry. I call on the MTRCB to make an independent investigation about this travesty of “special” people. In the name of ratings, some network people make a life out of being soooo insensitive.