Not that their utterances don’t make sense, but they are said at the wrong time in the wrong context, almost always.
For this, Senator Cynthia Villar and newbie Rep. Sandro Marcos, son of the president, always get scorned and rebuked by netizens each time they utter their “words of wisdom” in public, only for the people to find out of place, unfunny and sarcastic or uncalled for. And because of such ill-timed utterances, netizens post memes that make them look and sound ridiculous, almost to the point of stupidity, for a long time.
Reflecting on what they say and how they say it, and in what context, it is most often addressed to the wrong audience and for the wrong reasons that they already look insensitive, immature, have no empathy in their systems and lack compassion, particularly for the small people—who voted them to their offices.
It’s either they want to sound funny so people would not take things too seriously, or they are just truly dense (up there) or in their hearts. And because they are too wealthy, they don’t mind if they hurt the sensibilities of the poor (struggling farmers and fishermen) or they simply are out of touch with reality.
When Sandro talked about why the peso is low, netizens (the learned and the unlearned) worked out derivatives of such logic. They post such derivatives—which is hoped to rouse them from their detachment from reality—but Sandro persists with his wrong logic when he tries to make a point about burning issues.
His latest is about planting—in place of rice—dragon fruit, which is in high demand in Taiwan but not in the Philippines and say that this could even be our staple. What? Where did he get that perspective!!
“Dahil malapit yung Pilipinas sa Taiwan, yung Taiwan malaki ang demanda ng dragon fruit. Eh they can only plant dragon fruit three or four times, three or four months of the year. Kapag hindi na nila kayang itanim, planting season na dito,” the presidential son explained to reporters in Ilocos Norte.
“So if we can shift our farmers to plant dragon fruit kapag hindi na kailangan yung palay, para maibenta sa Taiwan kapag kailangan, Mas malaki kita nila. think times three or times four. So that’s going to be a big help,” Sandro added.
Netizens, however, aren’t keen on the idea, saying ample rice supply is essential to food security.
There were also some who criticized the young Marcos for not checking whether his idea was feasible or not because dragon fruit trees do not instantly bear fruit and takes years to mature.
As for Senator Villar—the billionaire whose family amassed such wealth from converting agricultural lands into subdivisions—she once said we don’t need research for agriculture. Again, where is this coming from. (Because of this, a senior official of the Department of Agriculture, tells farmers they are ignorant about marketing). Why are our officials denigrating and downgrading our lowly farmers, many of them unschooled and unlearned but they know more about life than those with doctorates and masters.
Of late she talked about planting rootcrops during the rainy season, so that when floods and landslides come, they do not get destroyed because they are under the ground. Duh.
Netizens minced no words in sharing what they thought of the senator’s proposal.
Among the criticisms she received was on the resilience of root crops to flooding due to the rainy season since root crops can also be damaged when submerged in water.
Another netizen heckled Villar and asked how farmers could continue planting when her family has established subdivisions in most of the agricultural lands. It is well known that the Villar family is one of the biggest developers of subdivisions in the country.
Another Twitter user reminded the public about the time the senator blew up at the hearing on the proposed budget for agricultural research.