Hello, Sir! Happy New Year!!!”
I looked up and I saw my first pleasant sight of the year.
“Oh, hello there, Miss Pinky Maglia Rosa,” I returned the greeting to my Fil-Italian junior law student from Omega Class.
“Fancy running into you in the library like this, sir!” she gushed.
“Well, I wanted to start my year with some solitude and to do that I needed a place that is soulfully quiet, a place that many people AVOID. So I thought what better place than the law school library?” I said with a mischievous wink. “And fancy finding you here too, Miss Pinky, you guys aren’t supposed to be back until Monday.”
“This was the best place for me to be too, Professor, I just spent the entire season of ‘peace’ immersed in the noisy holiday chaos of Baguio. I couldn’t wait for school to re-open even if there were no classes yet. I had to come here, the only place I know where a lady at the door REQUIRES you to turn off your cellphone,” said Miss Pinky.
“Riiiight…cellphones off,” I said while discreetly turning mine off under the table, “I gotta give it to you, though, hija. Even under the best circumstances, I rarely do find my students spending enough time in here.”
“You shouldn’t take offense, sir. The ‘library’ to my generation means Google and Playstore. Many of us have not even spread open a volume of SCRA just because there’s hardly any need to anymore. We have all the decisions of the Supreme Court in our cellphones now…!” said the freckly-faced Italian mestiza.
“SCRA…the Supreme Court Reports Annotated,” I sighed. I just had to say it out loud because I don’t hear it said often enough anymore.
“Aaaah, I’m a dinosaur, hija. You’re looking at a real live T-rex come down to earth cause his wings are weary,” I said.
“You mean a pterodactyl, sir. T-rexes didn’t fly. If they did, most of them would have barbecued themselves flying over all those volcanoes of the period, the Jurassic extinction would have happened much sooner,” she said with a giggle.
“Sooo…you spent the Christmas holidays in noisy Baguio, did you say Miss Pinky?” I pivoted away from the Jurassic topic, “I’d have expected you’d be joining your Filipina mom and your Italian dad in Milan…”
“Actually, it’s Messina, sir. It’s just a small city northeast of Sicily,” she corrected me, “no, I spent Christmas here in Baguio alone, sir. I wanted to FEEL Christmas, and there’s no other place on earth like the Philippines where you can feel Christmas from September to January!”
“You’re right about that,” I conceded, “but I’m surprised you didn’t think Christmas could be ‘felt’ better in Italy, where Rome is, where you have the Vatican--you know, Saint Peter’s Square on Christmas morning, where the Pope gives his traditional ‘Joy to the World--orbi et urbi—’ message?”
“Baliktad, sir. It’s ‘URBI ET ORBI’ and it doesn’t mean ‘joy to the world’ either,” she corrected me, “It’s just a short salutation for ‘to the City of Rome and to the rest of the world,’ which I find rather condescending. It’s like saying there are only two classifications of cities in the world—Rome and OTHERS “
“You know,” I looked the girl in the eyes, “I don’t think Mr. and Mrs. Guiseppe Maglia Rosa realize what a smart daughter they raised.”
“Hihihi,” she giggled, “actually, sir, I just call my dad ‘Joseph’ which is the English equivalent of ‘Guiseppe.’ Somehow, I couldn’t call him Guiseppe without picturing myself as Pinnochio!”
“Well, now that you mentioned it, I can’t believe I always thought of the story of Pinnochio as an AMERICAN creation all this time, when it’s actually Italian pala,” I said.
“So…sir,” this time SHE is pivoting from the topic of fathers, “what’s in the docket for our class this new year?”
“Well, I thought I might start off on Monday with a lecture on CYBERLIBEL because it seems to me some self-entitled individuals have found a way to make people hate the law even more, not that they don’t hate it enough already,” I said.
“I know what you mean, sir,” Miss Pinky said as she pulled out a chair to sit across me. There goes my afternoon of peace and quiet, I thought, “I read about the Frank Cimatu case during the Christmas break, sir. I still can’t believe it takes THAT LITTLE to get a conviction for cyberlibel.”
“Good. So you read Frank’s post and you agree it’s not libelous?” I asked.
“Oh, it think it was libelous, sir.”
“Miss Pinky, it’s very rare that a student confuses me with what she says, and you just joined that club. Would you care to explain your ambivalent position?”
“Well, sir, it’s not like Mr. Frank Cimatu wrote a whole article about it. He just wrote a one-liner post that said some public official got rich while in office and while there was a bird flu epidemic. Both of those statements are true. You lectured to us before that the TRUTH is NOT a defense in libel. Just like if you saw a blind person walk into a wall and you said, ‘hahaha! Ano ka ba, bulag??’ it’s libel. And even if you proved that the guy is in fact blind and he did, in fact, walk into a wall—in short, you were telling the truth—but if your utterance made people laugh at him, it is libel, isn’t it?”
“Well, if you wrote it down and published it, yes. When you shove my own lecture back in my face like that, how can I disagree? But for a moment there I thought you were feeling very critical about the fact that it took so little to get convicted for cyberlibel…”
“I am, sir. I’m saying Mr. Frank Cimatu did nothing different from what hundreds of other journalists do everyday—which is to hit public officials, and hit them hard. It shouldn’t matter if they’re telling the truth or not, since falseness of allegation is not an element of libel. It should only matter that some people should be mocked and some people shouldn’t. I think the courts should take a bold proactive stance that some people are just ‘libel proof.’ If you’re a fisherman, I don’t think you should be allowed to complain that you get wet a lot.”
“So you’re saying Frank hit someone who deserved it? And that someone had no business filing libel complaints?”
“I don’t know if that official deserved it, sir, but one thing is sure: Mr. Frank Cimatu didn’t mock a blind guy who walked into a wall. He took a potshot at somebody whose income rose by WHATEVER means while in office. And you know what the height of the irony about the whole thing was, Professor?”
“No, but I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me,” I sat back in my chair.
“The guy was Secretary of Agriculture, for crying out loud! If anybody should be able to understand the meaning of 'ONION-SKINNED,' the sanamagan should!” Miss Pinky said sheepishly, big stupid grin on her face like she had just body-slammed a Cabinet secretary.
I thought hard and long about it, then finally I leaned forward across the table, “Miss Pinky Maglia Rosa, just because you pointed out how little it takes to be convicted for cyberlibel, I’m going to lay down a rule that I want you and all your classmates to observe from now on…”
“What is it, sir?”
“I am the ONLY one,” I paused for emphasis, “who is allowed to use the word ‘sanamagan’ in class from now on, do you understand??”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now run along now, wherever you are in the Philippines, you gotta know that these walls have ears!”
“Hahaha, I know what you mean. Happy New Year again, sir!!”
“Happy New Year to you, too, hija!*
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