I don’t watch the news often. Weeks would go by without me deliberately turning on the TV to watch whatever is happening around me. Ignorance is bliss as they say; but, even so, I do not remain in this state. Current issues are often shoved in my head the moment I get inside the office. My co-workers cannot be stopped from talking about whatever they see on TV, or read from the papers. Aside from these unstoppable mouths, there’s Yahoo, the default site on my laptop; so while waiting for Facebook, Multiply, Friendster, or whatever site to pull up, the stalking news is in front of me.

Sometime this week I was struck by a news report showing a video of Boyet Fajardo stripping some Duty Free employees, especially one whose name’s Marvin Fernandez, of their dignity as human beings. On the video, Fajardo was shown as a furious customer whose rage was supposedly caused by the male cashier’s asking of a valid ID, while at a counter, as proof that he is the owner of the credit card he was using to purchase some goods, a procedure which is supposed to be expected from establishments that value the importance of security. Fajardo, made his anger more visible by pointing fingers at the employees calling the cashier ‘bakla’ and one of the managers ‘baboy.’

In an attempt to pacify Fajardo, the manager told the cashier to proceed with swiping the card, never mind the ID, but that didn’t stop livid customer, he said he’ll only be relieved if the cashier agrees either to be slapped or to kneel in front of him. Fernandez, the unfortunate cashier, chose the latter while crying in shame as several people witnessed the price he paid for doing his job.

Now, I’m not going to form opinions about the incident and add to the already long list of derogatory words thrown at the said designer. Countless of blogs have done that already, and I’m not going to be able to describe the wrongness of what he did in a way that wasn’t already done. What I’m concerned about is how some people reacted. And how some of them, in their efforts to show disgust over Fajardo’s behaviour, showed the people who read their comments and hear their opinions, their similarity to the person they abhor, in the process.

“walang hiya kang bakla ka!”

“tama lang yung ginawa ni Mao Tse Tsung at Hitler na ipapatay lahat mga bakla.”

“baboy..dapat kaw ang ipaku sa krus ng pabaliktad ngayong semana..leche ka! Baboy...”

“please lang ituloy nyo ang kaso na yan sa hayuf na baklang yan.”

“cno yn c fajardo? sikat ba yan? sikat nga pala dahil pinaluhod nya ang kapwa nya bakla...hahaha....”

“may araw ka rin tabatsoy...kang bading ka!”

These were just a few of the comments I read on Youtube and some blog sites. I stopped reading at about the third or fourth page of the comments section since it felt as if I was being slapped a hundred times as every comment page progressed.

I believe—No, there’s no point preaching here but--Aaargh! If we are a people who can leave comments like the ones I quoted, why should we condemn Fajardo? What makes us different from him? If we throw stones at him why, oh why the hell aren’t we throwing some at ourselves?

My head’s aching. I’m going to bed now.