Conrado de Quiros starts to focus on the droll, unintelligent, trivial, and irrelevant aspects of P.Noy

Undoubtedly failing in a monumental effort of scrounging around for anything of substance and relevance to trumpet as evidence of "progress" in the administration of President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III, chief administration publicist Conrado de Quiros turns to the trivial and irrelevant for salvation, highlighting P.Noy's use of Tagalog in his speeches as a sign of great things ahead...

[...] he spoke in Filipino at the Rizal Park during his inauguration and at the Batasan during his Sona. He didn’t just use a smattering of Filipino, which has been the style of past presidents in inaugurations and Sonas. He spoke in Filipino from beginning to end.

Seemingly a minor thing, like not using wang-wang, it is in fact just as major. Seemingly a trivial thing, like wearing ordinary clothes outside of work, like having simple meals, like being accessible to the public, it is in fact just as all-important. It is all of a piece with being one of the people. It is all of a piece with being one with the people.

... all of course consistent with our renowned fixation on the droll and unintelligent, the trivial or the irrelevant.

Bizarrely, de Quiros pays tribute to the guy who first did the Tagalog thing, the venerable former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada, saying how P.Noy's Tagalogizing...

[...] is by no means completely original. The first one to do it was Erap during his inauguration. [...] His speech was magnificent, particularly where he got to the part about “walang kama-kamag-anak, walang kai-kaibigan” to express his resolve to produce a government for all and not just for a few. You almost believed it.

Funny that he'd highlight this for it certainly got me thinking how Noynoy's administrations seems to be heading towards the same direction as far as his credibility goes. Whereas many people believed his campaign rhetoric, much of it is now utterly flattened under the weight of comparisons between that and what is being put in practice today by both the President and his henchmen, not to mention all the resulting backpedalling in response to this scrutiny.

Indeed, what de Quiros says may as well be in reference to where P.Noy's credibility is headed...

As it turned out, that [in the quote above] was [Erap's] highest point. Everything went downhill from there.

In P.Noy's case, it hasn't been a slow downhill slide since he delivered his infamous State of the Nation Address (SONA) to Congress on the 26th of July this year. It's been more like a hairy sled ride down a steep ice-coated slope! As the Queen of Hearts would have ordered having realised she's been made a fool of by her own people -- off with their heads. But that's the whole trouble with having people you owe favours to working for you in your own Government. It's all a big love-in -- basically a bunch of people who deserve each other stuck with being subject to one another's incompetence.

As the man de Quiros himself speculates...

I understand [P.Noy's preference for Tagalog] has wreaked havoc among his communication people who are at pains to produce speeches in Filipino. That is P-Noy’s own personal preference. That is P-Noy’s own presidential imperative.

Maybe that's the reason why the whole communications thingy in Malacanang has grown from a mere thingy to a full blown Thing -- to the tune of an additional 19 bozos devoted to the art of "communication".

Sayaw, Pinoy, sayaw...