From time to time, media and Palace make a public issue about Noynoy's smoking habit which is a purely personal matter for him. Unlike a perversion, a smoking habit has no impact whatsover on the public interest and public affairs.

The first group feign concern for Noynoy's health and express the desire for him to set the example of giving up smoking. Cute. The second feign regret that Noy just won't give up the habit. He is as hard headed about smoking as he is about Daan Matuwid with the exception of the FOI and RH. What can you do? Obstinate in one, obstinate in all. Cute also.

We gotta take the good with the unhealthy but only for Noynoy because if the govt was serious about taxing general smoking to death, not to mention drunken driving, why did it pass a sin tax that only adds more govt revenues to continuing cancer and tipsiness without strongly stopping both but a punishing tax P2,000 a pack of cigarettes and P3,000 a bottle of beer and gin, especially gin which dissolves your liver while making you think you are talking more sense the less sense you can make with every swallow of beer and gin.

Ever notice when your boss is drunk, he talks like he knows everything especially the shape of your ass, when he knows nothing. Smart people are always sober.

Anyway, this kunyari concern is infantilising the public. No one should care what the president does with his lips, he has only 6 years to serve. No vice kills you that fast. And there is always a vice president in the wings. Fighting smoking cannot depend on one man setting the example, but on every smoker making the decision that he can do what the president cannot.

This issue is just another way that media today likes to cutitize the news, likes to make everything cute so a public it presumes likes cute can relate to developments way over its head. That is patronizing, it excludes the public from real involvment in public affairs.

Nation building is not cute nor is rule of law or govt and public health. These are serious business demanding serious treatment. If they are incapable of it, they should be ignored. It is the duty of media to mature the public like mango, not revert it to childhood and make it carboro. On top of which, to pass off as cute, subjects who are anything but, seems a silly business.

Keep well