Volume 2, Issue No. 18
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .
Our latest as of Wednesday, September 23, 2020
~ Two adult women, one a septuagenarian, and the other two decades her junior, are locked in a fierce verbal scrimmage over personal matters on Facebook. Their back-and-forth exchanges and behaviour are so heated one would think they're juveniles fighting over spilled milk. They trade barbs and profanities too degrading to even mention in polite society.
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CUSIPAG V. HAMMER
The Spectacle of a Virtual Fight on Facebook
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"Profanity is for the feeble-minded". - William Brent Bell
TORONTO - The live spectacle had taken place on Facebook days ago and is off now, perhaps temporarily.
The bitter and sometimes vulgar face-off was between two women, one a septuagenarian and the other, a 50-year-old, which suggests a generational divide. Jealousy, envy, professional differences, you name it, and it figures.
"She is very obsessed with me. And for whatever reasons, I don't know," says the younger antagonist.
Much to both the delight and embarrassment of their supporters and other social media users, the verbal tussle had lighted up another depressing day of the coronavirus pandemic where, nationwide, Canada has 146,663 confirmed cases and 9, 234 deaths compared to our neighbour to the south, the United States, which registered a grim milestone: 6.92 million cases, and 201,000 deaths as of September 22, 2020.
It's probably safe to say that were it not for physical distancing and other health precautions, the protagonists - Teresita Cusipag, publisher of Balita tabloid; and Lily Hammer, a local entrepreneur - would have been pulling each other's hair or trying to disrobe the other while yelling profanities at the top of their voices. (Video and full story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QprwiFQiLjs).
Such a scenario is a common sight in public markets in the Philippines, thus the term "palengkera" to mean loudmouth, boorish. Women fight, they swear, they trade blows, they rough and tumble over the flimsiest of gossips. Some of my neighbours in Manila do it as if it's their pastime. It's funny, and in rare cases, bloody.
Ms. Cusipag and Ms. Hammer are, by age, more than two decades apart. The latter calls the former "grandma", which, in the context of their brawl, is not exactly an endearment. It's a tease, but it is true, the 70-plus-years-old Ms. Cusipag is a grandmother in real life.
As a response, Ms. Cusipag tags Ms. Hammer a "palengkera," and "patay gutom". This last-mentioned is her favorite cuss word meaning dirt poor. Worse than that, however, she hits her literally below the belt with an innuendo ascribing a sex act in Tagalog that's too offensive to mention.
Based on my own personal experience working as a reporter and associate editor at Balita for seven years, it is my opinion that Ms. Cusipag is - and I repeat now what I had written in another article - a loose cannon and fires like a shotgun without so much caring she might inflict collateral damage on the innocents.
I've seen and heard it before. Her lexicon is full of expletives and most of them, probably because she considers herself well off by inheritance, are rooted in money or lack of it. Being poor makes one susceptible to her verbal attacks. I should know, I had been an indirect recipient a few times.
Ms. Hammer is not the first to be labeled as "patay gutom". Ms. Cusipag has also branded a litigant in our libel case (which we lost, unfortunately) the same demeaning swearword just to spite him for demanding payment of monetary damages awarded by the court.
The furious war of words is predictably going to court. One accuses the other of defamation, and so it's a big win again for the lawyers who stand to gain in this fight.
Yesterday, September 22, 2020, the heated verbal skirmish flared up again on Facebook. The barbs are remarkable in their decadence. Ms. Hammer refers to Ms. Cusipag as a "defamation queen". In turn, she calls her again by a crude sexual innuendo.
For the record, Ms. Cusipag and I had been the defendants in four libel cases and lost in two. For a community newspaper like Balita, the costs and amount of damages (close to half-a-million dollars each) awarded by the courts to the plaintiffs may be considered one of the highest, if not the highest, in Canada.
In one of the cases, Ms. Cusipag was so upset by the decision that she complained against the judge and alluded to his race on a Facebook post. That prompted another suit that found her guilty of contempt. Another judge sentenced her to 21 days in jail. After serving 13 days, she was released. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NGQX-SucJ4).
I remember another case where she was named a defendant by an aging beauty queen, again because of her Facebook post. It seems she has the impulse to comment, react, and express a contrary opinion on anything that comes her way, regardless of its relevance to her paper, or whether supported by hard evidence. (Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2020/08/balitas-non-story-to-avenge-hurt.html).
Her prison experience should have taught her a lesson on how to use Facebook. Not all postings on that platform are true. Not all posters there are real people. A big number of users are impostors who fake their names and other personal information. Facebook is a paradise for scammers and crooks.
The people she's trying to defend, allegedly in keeping with Balita's mandate, are those propped up by a self-centered labor recruiter of dubious credentials. At her age, she should know better but she doesn't. She continues to inflict damage to herself and to the paper by fighting on behalf of ghosts and windmills.
Ms. Cusipag writes in one of her Facebook posts: "She (meaning Ms. Hammer) can laugh and laugh but why they are after us when we are publishing truths and helping victims"?
"Truths" - what are those? "Victims" - who are they? Are they worth the time, money, and headache? (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
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