Those Yellow goons over at the Edsa People Power Commission succumbed to public outrage and withdrew their lame-brained plan to close White Plains Avenue for 16 days while they celebrate their 30th anniversary. The latest announcement from the commission states that the vital spur road to Edsa will be closed to traffic only for one day, Feb. 25.
That’s still one day too many, if you ask me. Me, and those tens of thousands of commuters and motorists who were inconvenienced last year, when the Yellows shut down Edsa for their high holidays and forgot to tell the rest of the population to stay home.
Understand, I say “inconvenienced” only because one year is too long to hold a grudge, even against clueless Yellows who still think everybody shares their strange belief system. I personally walked more than a kilometer from the office where I work in the mornings on the Pasig side of Shaw Boulevard to a meeting in Mandaluyong on the other, along with thousands of other ride-less Filipinos muttering curses under their breath, so I know exactly what happened last year.
But when the Yellows attempted to up the ante from last year by promising a 16-day traffic jam for their 30th anniversary, they got exactly what they had coming to them: Pure, unadulterated anger, especially online, where not even the most rabid of Aquino loyalists dared to defend the brain-dead plan.
Of course, no one has claimed responsibility for dreaming up the White Plains closure. The Yellows who conceived this wonderful people power gift to the people were smart enough to not identify themselves—and that information will probably never leave Bahay Pangarap.
But you have to admire the audacity of the Yellows for expecting the rest of us to just accept that this is a big deal for them and that any inconvenience they may cause is their inviolable right. After all, they even had alternate routes drawn up, so people can’t accuse them of being insensitive to the problems of losing access to an important diversion road for more than two weeks.
So I don’t really think the Edsa commission should be congratulated for being sensitive. If we charge people for attempting but not consummating murder, I suggest that we should also go after these jokers for trying to impose their beliefs on a weary population once again—even if they got cold feet and decided against it at the very last moment.
And these are the people who look down on people who have the courage of their political convictions when these don’t jibe with their own. Thank God we don’t have to suffer these Yellow hypocrites for much longer.
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Yesterday, the journalists and other staffers of The Standard celebrated an anniversary of their own, this newspaper’s 29th year in publication. It’s been quite a run, really, for all of us who at one time or another worked in what was originally called the Manila Standard.
I’ve been privileged to have been a part of this newspaper from the very beginning, when Rod Reyes, Andy del Rosario and the rest of the original crew of editors, columnists and reporters assembled and combined their talents to come up with the newspaper that you, dear reader, have come to regularly read and love. And I’m proud to report that the current crop of journalists who put the paper together today share the same passion for reporting, editing and opinion-writing that inflamed the original staff.
All newspapers have their own stories that never make the pages that come out every day of the year, stories that, unfortunately, will never be told. As the old newsroom adage says, people who love to eat sausages and read newspapers should never watch either being made.
We in The Standard have no shortage of stories to tell, apart from the ones you read. But it is still a continuing story, after all, and nobody can really divine the ending yet.
What amazes me no end is how those years seem to have flown by so fast. It seemed like only yesterday, for instance, when “RTR,” as we called our first editor-in-chief and publisher, would preside over editorial meetings while sitting on one corner of the central desk, one leg raised above the floor, his soft and kindly voice heard clearly above the suddenly quiet typewriters.
So much time has passed since those halcyon days, when there was no Internet, no Google, no Facebook and, yes, no cellular phones, even. But The Standard’s passion for news and opinion never changed; we still love delivering the concise news that you want and the opinions that make you understand it better.
On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone in The Standard who’s made my own stay here, in various capacities and at various times over these past 29 years, so challenging, so colorful and ultimately so fulfilling. I’m proud to be a part of this organization and I always will be, wherever I end up eventually.
Happy 29th year to The Standard. Now we can start working on the next 29 years.
