Lessons learned from former 'Darlings' of the Media

Ellen Tordesillas found the appropriate title for her recent blog There are still those left behind. In an act of hollow-headed banditry on February of 2006 a renegade group of military personnel stormed the Manila Peninsula with the apparent hope of using it as a base for inciting wider-scale mutiny across the military establishment. The subject of the “crusade” in this instance was supposedly around a “withdrawal of support” from President Gloria Arroyo on account of the whole “Hello-Garci” cheating scandal that surrounded her at the time.

Twenty-eight men were accused of being complicit in this act of rebellion, detained, and subject to the justice system. For one moronic reason or another, half of these have since been set free. It is not much of a stretch of the imagination to suppose that those poor sods remaining in detention are perhaps those at the bottom of the pecking order. They are most likely the sorely unconnected latak of the group with no strings to pull and no influential advocates to back their plight.

From my comfy armchair overlooking the leafy terrain of suburban Sydney, the only hope of the 15 men still incarcerated in Camp Capinpin lies in Jolog Central monarch Ellen Tordesillas.

Not a very good ending for a group that was once the darling of the Philippine Media, isn’t it? So much for real “hope” guys. Merry Christmas in advance — for the next ten years.

This is where I get to that part of discourse Filipinos tend to be averse to:

Lessons learned.

This one is easy, because there is only one lesson to be learned here:

If you think Media adulation will get you anywhere, think again.

This poignant picture painted by Tordesillas of 15 imprisoned men now looking more like wet kittens than the dashing soldiers they once were is a far cry from the time that self-important reporters dished out the battle cry “Media kami!” in their defense back in 2006 while facing an assault conducted on these would-be mutineers by a contingent of legitimate government troops…

When the fully armed, fully masked SAF pushed the door open aiming their high-powered firearms at us, they were greeted by TV cameras as we shouted “Media kami.” They went to another room but finding it empty came back. They wanted to bring us out but we complained about stinging tear gas. One SAF member said, “Okay na, okay na.” One of us said, “Why don’t you remove your mask. Let’s see if you can say, ‘ok’. ANC’s Ces Drilon went on air to appeal to the authorities to stop the tear gassing so we could all go down.

After a while, the SAF came back. They first grabbed Trillanes and Lim. Then they herded the rest of us out. They ordered us to raise our hands. Most people ignored the order reasoning out, “We are not surrenderers.”

Funny how such “important” things come across as rather quaint in retrospect, don’t they?

What was once an “important” initiative now pales in in favour of the “important” issues of 2010 Aquinoism. What was once something worth risking life and limb over is now at the bottom of the Darling Scale of the Abunda-eque Philippine Media. I wonder now what is going on in the minds of these once young soldiers as they languish in prison over their participation in a “crusade” that — again, in retrospect — didn’t really matter to them in the overall scheme of the rest of their lives.

Hey wait… they’ve still got Ellen Todesillas on their side!

I feel better already.

Here’s the guy
you need to thank
for your troubles…