"The rich get richer and the poor get--children."

Thanks to The Spy In The Sandwich and his latest post, Looking For The Gucci Gang, I have come belatedly to know about a certain society scandal that doesn't seem to have made its way to mainstream media, but has enraptured many bloggers for the last few days. I normally am not drawn to stories like this, and when I am, it's with a sense of befuddled distaste. It feels too ickily alien, for some reason, even more alien than a sci-fi story with, well, icky aliens. Or maybe it's because I know that the characters are not alien, and therefore, are somewhere out there. (Well, aliens are, according to scientists, somewhere out there, too). And since these characters are somewhere out there, a chance encounter with them is entirely within the realm of possibility. And for some reason, I don't feel completely right about such an encounter. Maybe it's because I know that it's in all our potentials to end up like this, if we're not careful? I don't know for certain. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way, but I think others can explain the reasons better than I. (Anyone care to take a try at putting these feelings into words?).

(I've re-read the above paragraph, and perhaps it's unfair for me to have used the word "alien". What is being detailed in the scandal is surely a presentation of an aspect of the human condition, after all, no matter how much I feel like wrinkling my nose at it. But I'm keeping the paragraph because I wrote it in heat, and I know it reflects what I felt upon reading The Spy In The Sandwich's post. That, and "ignorant hubris", as well as "haynako, here we go again.")

I find it coincidental that it was only recently that I recall feeling something akin to this, just a few weeks ago, in fact, but I don't expect local readers to know much about it. I only followed this earlier scandal because I saw the movies and pictures of one of the characters involved when I was very much younger, and found her cute! (ang babaw ko talaga) So when she popped into my consciousness through this scandal, I ended up following that too. Yes, marunong din akong maging chismoso. And that first event ended up as scandalously tragic and hilariously absurd as this second one.

The blog author that has caused this feels like a less restrained Nick Carraway, and in this case, this real-life Nick has been wronged and is out for revenge. And as far as I can see, I don't see a Jay Gatsby here, drawn to do what he does, to indulge in materialistic hedonism, out of love. But I do see this:

"(Though Nick) idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it." (from a write-up about The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald).

"Uncomfortable" being an understatement.

So who says you can't learn anything from fiction? Fitzgerald's story came decades before all this.

Oh well. That's enough of that (though I might just pick up my copy of The Great Gatsby and go through it again quickly).