There is a new game in town called noynoying, and it’s played in the streets, not on cellphones.
Who would have thought that an ordinary but endearing Pinoy nickname would metamorphose into an action word signifying inaction?
Well, the unthinkable has happened – the nation’s political poster boy is now the people’s object of ridicule and raucous streets protests.
Noynoy has, somehow, lost its magic spell and luster. Noynoy is OUT, noynoying in IN. And you can give credit to the fertile imagination of militant students who, visibly frustrated, fed-up, infuriated and mad at presidential lethargy, demanded that Mr. Aquino act decisively and fast to ease the people’s burden caused by the perpetual oil price hike and impending tuition fee increases by private schools and colleges.
The students urged the President to act, not rationalize incompetence; act, not point to scapegoats, act, not justify cavalier leadership; act, not wallow in high trust rating.
Without any doubt, the noynoying act caught Aquino administration drumbeaters with their pants down. They were stunned and rendered tongue-tied with blank looks on their faces. They didn’t know what hit them.
The communication geniuses at Malacañang could only mumble anemic asides at the protesting students, advising them to concentrate on their studies instead of taking potshots at the President.
It took some time – – about a week – – before someone came up with an oblique counter offensive in the person of Mar Roxas, the President’s political bitter half during the 2010 presidential poll.
Roxas offered his own concept or definition of noynoying which he meant as “someone who always tells the truth” (?) and “who puts the people’s interest ahead of politics.”
But his posturing was sophomoric, if not moronic. He completely missed the students’ message. The inventors of the term noynoying equate it with them four “I’s” indicative of the character traits of Aquino as a leader – – INCOMPETENT, INSENSITIVE, ILLUSIONAL, INUTIL.
Oh, by the way, a Korean television personality, who is paraded as Quino’s fictional lady love, also came to his rescue declaring that the President is a “workaholic” (Ugh!).
Pro-Aquino national dailies and tabloids have done their bests to keep the term noynoying out of their pages and eventually confine it to oblivion.
But someone couldn’t help but go back in time to the decade of 60s when movie legend Manuel Conde produced several sequels of Juan Tamad movies culminating with Juan Tamad Goes to Malacañang, a masterful spoof of lazy Juan becoming the country’s president.
Of course, Conde didn’t have Aquino in mind when he made that movie. But if he did, it was prophetic.@
oooOooo
Noynoying was the deafening sound of silence that shook Malacañang and left its occupant trembling.@
