House Resolution 2140: Pogi kami, hindi pangit

Lolong, from mindanews.com

What's gotten into Congressman Aurelio Gonzales, Jr of Pampanga, filing House Resolution 2140 seeking to prevent the film and showbiz industry from portraying congressmen as crooks or evil people? Huh!?   Since when has filming the truth become subject to legislature?

I know that not all congressmen are crooks.  It's just too impossible to think that not even one of  the close to 300 members of the lower house is honest.  But anyone who has been into a pigsty for some period of time will emerge smelling like a pig, though he is not one, nor will he ever be one.   That's the risk of being in such a trade, you are branded by association, though all you ever wanted was to serve your people.



But you don't go telling people not to use their nose especially when you have taken in some unusual scent.  At the end of the day, you know who you are and you are farthest from a swine, though you smell like one.  So why be on the defensive?

Congressman Gonzales says that he filed such resolution to protect their public reputation as well as to prevent young children, especially their kin, to look at them in such a negative light.

There are existing options available to Congressman Gonzales and other onion-skinned crocodiles, I mean legislators other than filing a bill curtailing the right to free expression.

First, don't be a congressman.

Second, if you are a congressman and you cannot just walk away from it, give up your pork barrel.

And third, do not file such a resolution; file something that benefits your constituents and not yourself, and go home, sleep the sleep of an honest public servant.

If his children ask him why he and his kind are portrayed as crooks, then he should take that as the perfect opportunity to explain to the young mind the nobility of public service and the dangers to reputation that come along with it.  Every politician claims such when being accused or maligned for a supposed wrongdoing, pinu-politika lang.

No public crook will ever go public that he is a crook.  It simply goes against their grain of being one.  But if a congressman goes out of his way to file a bill that, in effect, tells people to look at them as the model of purity and honesty, then something must be wrong.

And besides, teleseryes and movies minus crooked politicians?  Boring.