Last night, I was supposed to get a respite from my usual evening classes in law school. I went home from our House of Representatives office in the middle of the afternoon after going through a check-up at the Congress’ medical facility. I hadn’t been feeling well since I woke up that morning. I remember waking up in the middle of the night with chills. I felt feverish (though the doctor said I didn’t have fever), I had a very bad headache, I was having a bad runny nose, and the beginnings of a bad cough. In other words, I felt like I was coming down with the flu.

I took a nap late in the afternoon, then I woke up early in the night to a morbid spectacle on live TV. The early evening news programs had been extended. The usual soap operas had given way to a hostage drama on simultaneous nationwide broadcast. Apparently, it was also syndicated on major global news networks. Then, unexpected turn of events happened rapidly one after another right before our very eyes. From the dramatic arrest of the hostage-taker’s brother, and his relatives wailing pleas to stop the arrest, to the actual firing of bullets from the bus, and the tenseful reporting made by the TV commentators, to the bloody end of it all.

I couldn’t believe we were seeing it all on TV! Despite the lingering moralist thought that I shouldn’t patronize this blatant sensationalism, and the ugly thought that people were dying at the very instant in the same frames and footage we were witnessing, I couldn’t take my attention off from the intense series of events. Admit it or not, we were all glued to our TV sets. How can we explain ourselves? It felt really wrong, but we couldn’t resist not to miss a second of it. Sure, we find police thrillers and action movies gratifying, but we all enjoy it with the comfort of knowing it is all faux. But last night, it was real.

There’s probably some psychological explanation to it.

What I don’t quite understand is how quite a number of Filipinos, at least those who have been tweeting their thoughts online, are extremely concerned with how other countries will see the Philippines after the tragic hostage-taking incident. I mean, fine, I understand. As a journalist had said, where is everyone’s sense of proportion? Some people never expressed this extreme sense of national shame or remorse with, say, peasant landlessness, social and economic injustice among our people, extrajudicial killings, etcetera. These are legitimate issues that are similarly causes of national embarrassment to the eyes of the world, aren’t they?

It bothers me how we’re so concerned with our “tourist” outward image, and not-so with our internal conditions. Perhaps that’s why some of us are content with cosmetic changes in our society? As long as it looks good, some of us live well, as long as the tourists don’t see the rotten situation many of our people live in, it’s okay!

Can we not take this cosmetic, tourism-inspired nationalism notches higher and aspire for deeper changes that address the root causes of all the phsyical unsightly things we are oh so concerned of? Only then will we forever get rid of the very sights and images some of us are so ashamed to show foreigners.