Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Re Alec Baldwin's joke about Filipina Mail-Order Brides

I've posted this as a comment on facebook, but I decided to post it here to go on record as saying that: Alec Baldwin has NOTHING to apologize for. He jokingly made a reference to a real and current state of affairs. The same congressmen who made/are making speeches in the Batasan should apologize to US for perpetuating an economic climate that enables/encourages marrying strange foreigners as an viable/credible  life option. To put it crassly (but quasi-Biblically) they remind me of the dissolute maton who pissed his life and patrimony away at the sabong and pool tables, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. One day he hears someone making a joke about how his daughters' only job options are as nurses, maids, japayuki, and gets fucking wounded. How dare the drunk dishonor his daughters, and worse, the Family Name! "THIS CALLS FOR AN IMMEDIATE DISCUSSION!" 

Every year or so, there's another Immediate Discussion about some actress or actor or something making some crack on American TV. Kate Winslet. Something about roaches.  That line in Desperate Housewives about our doctors that gave birth to a god-damn petition that got more signatures than one condemning monks, fucking HOLY MEN, getting shot in the streets in Burma. Jesus, can we just get the fuck OVER OURSELVES! 

Speaking of which, we should pause to think about the existential/political commentary that a mail-order bride makes. It's possible to see it as performance art on the samurai level, compressing your life into the blade of a single gesture: "You know what? I'm just gonna go out and marry a old white psycho sheepherder that I met on the internet! It sure beats life here!"
Thousands of these bloody-edged jokes a year, and the government still stands. Jesus.

2 comments:

Sylvia said...

Claire Danes, not Kate Winslet. And that's why I'm still annoyed at Claire Danes.

Tad Ermitano said...

Erm...thanks for the correction, but gotta say that to remain annoyed at Danes is to miss the point of this post. I rather like that I'd forgotten who said it. ;-)