The missing boy

IT’S not that by practice I like to read gossip columns. It’s just that every time I open the papers or the Internet, gossip items just pop up, and even if you don’t read the whole story, you get to read the titles and the subtitles.

Of course, the lurid pictures are there to grab our attention too. No matter how well-intentioned and focused we are, we end up actually being at the mercy of the many tricks and gimmicks of the media.

That’s how I got to learn, for example, that now the so-called “golden couple,” Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, are filing for a divorce, with the purring Angelina declaring that this business of fidelity is overrated. Whoa!

Let’s get this straight. If I remember right, when they started to live together, they vowed never to get married unless gay couples were also allowed to marry. So, if they were not married, what’s there to divorce? Maybe, divorce here means division of their assets. Maybe…

Anyway, I found that view rather strange. Are they gay themselves, I asked myself, and what connection is there between their marriage or non-marriage with gay marriage in general? Clearly, I’m missing something.

But similar views are also expressed by similar characters. George Clooney, for example, pictured with a gorgeous chick curled around him, also said he will never get married. I didn’t bother to know the reason why.

Sometime ago, another actress, Halle Berry, was just contented getting pregnant by some male model and again declaring she’ll never get married. She offered some reason, but it didn’t stick in my mind. I only remember that the logic was as slippery as an eel.

What’s happening? And why are some of our local papers patronizing this kind of stories? Is this supposed to show our openness of mind, our tolerance in a pluralistic world, our flowing with the times, our keeping up with the Joneses?

Are we now writing off the Ten Commandments, religion and morality? What is now the basis of our sense of right and wrong? Are we having a new normal, typified by things like vanity and egoism, lust and eroticism, promiscuity and infidelity, etc.?

Are these supposed to be the expressions of freedom? We seem to be getting confused and lost. Worse, we are losing our sense of shame, modesty and outrage. Our moral sense seems to be dead or in coma.

What’s supposed to be hidden and hushed up is now flaunted and proclaimed to the four winds. Some people, usually stars and celebrities, glory in what supposed to be their own shame. They couple and decouple at the turn of the weather vane.

Self-assertion now completely replaces self-denial. The cross is simply a decoration, a fashion statement, or even a symbol of youthful dissent, completely devoid of its religious content.

It appears that in this field, any mention of Christian or religious or moral guideline is considered taboo or out of place. The world of entertainment is supposed to be a free-floating open city where anything goes as long as one avoids creating a public mess. Only primitive instincts are allowed.

It’s clear that we are missing the boy who dared to say the king was naked when everyone else just played along with the fiction that the king was in golden robes.

Many of our media indiscriminately download celebrity items and other gossips purely to cater to and exploit the lower tastes and desires of the people. And thus, they contribute to the moral desensitization of the people. And from there we can only expect worse things.

Of course, to correct this anomaly would require a higher sense of morals, and nothing less than genuine spiritual life, from all of us and especially those directly involved in the media.

But this idea might be considered preposterous as of now. There’s literary or artistic freedom, rather its hydra-like false versions, to contend with, in the first place. And there’s the practical considerations of profitability, pressures at work, etc. to consider.

I still think there’s hope. We just have to kneel down and pray, and beg God that something be done, and we, in whatever capacity and possibility we have, can write to the media people pointing out the faults, or suggesting ideas, or even getting into the business itself.

This problem will require a massive and active participation of the people. Even if we have found the missing boy, all of us also need to act.