I REMEMBER again a column a friend of mine wrote ages ago. It was a satire. He commended the appointment of a moralistic bastard to a government post that would enable him to render judgment on creative works. The commendation was grossly exaggerated and full of praise for the wrong things. He ended by saying that he could think of no one who better deserved the job.

How did the moralistic bastard react? He wrote a letter thanking my friend profusely!

His letter was not satirical. But that just goes to show how satire can be a dangerous thing in this country. Not because it invites reprisal from its target but because it invites misunderstanding from its target audience. I have another friend who got sued for writing a satirical piece by someone who wasn?t her target. Hell, I got sued?or this newspaper was?for a satirical piece by two people I was trying to help!

This was way back in the early 1990s when I was still writing editorials for this paper. A man and woman got fired from their jobs, clerical ones in a provincial court. They had both worked for decades there, but now lost not just their jobs but their retirement benefits. Their crime? They were having an affair. I said they truly deserved to be fired, having clerical jobs was a crime in itself. Of course the judge was a well-known drunk, but being a judge his judgment could never be impaired. And of course the court was known to look the other way in cases involving the rich, but that was courtly prerogative. Or words to this effect. You get the drift.

We got sued?by the man and woman! Of course the provincial court dismissed the suit almost immediately. What can I say? The judge himself must have been tremendously pleased.

I remembered all this when I read Chip Tsao?s article ?The War at Home.? That was the article that produced a tempest in our teacup last week. Many Filipinos took umbrage at being depicted as ?a nation of servants.? The DFA demanded an apology from the offending Hong Kong publication, and got it. The Bureau of Immigration got into the act and declared Tsao persona non grata, never to set foot in these shores without issuing an apology for the contumely.

Curious at a thing that could drive us to heights of outrage, when we are being openly injured and insulted every day by our government and we just shrug it off as part of being Filipino, I read the article. My reaction? LOL, as the kids say. Or for those who do not understand text language any more than satire, laugh out loud.

The article is funny and witty. What is it saying? Let?s see if we can?t exaggerate it more to drive home the satire:

The Russians are meddling in Spratlys? Fine, the Russians taught the Chinese Marx and Lenin anyway. The Japanese are meddling in Spratlys? Fine, the Chinese can?t do without karaoke anyway. But the Filipinos threatening to go to war over Spratlys? That is an outrage! Being a patriotic Chinese citizen, he (Tsao) means to do his part. He has already told his Filipino maid that if war breaks out between China and the Philippines, he will hold her hostage.

?The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East?. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout ?China, Madam/Sir? loudly whenever they hear the word ?Spratly.? They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, ?Long live Chairman Mao!? at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution.?

Isn?t that funny? And isn?t the target clearly the Chinese government? The Falkland Islands is a dead giveaway. The Falkland War, which Britain fought with Argentina in 1982, is a reminder of lingering British colonialism. By the same token, the Spratlys is a reminder of ongoing Chinese expansionism. The references to indoctrination and ?Long live Chairman Mao? are an even deader giveaway.

Arguably, Tsao could have used another way to satirize the Chinese government, but the use of the Filipino maid is just too tempting. This is not of the order of that joke in ?Desperate Housewives? where, upon being told she is menopausal, Teri Hatcher says: ?OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren?t, like, from some med school in the Philippines?? That is truly cruel, casting as it does Filipino doctors in a bad light, with not very savory consequences for their practice in the US. It deserved being protested.

Tsao?s ?joke? is nothing like that. It even casts Filipinos in a good light, by inference. Surely the Chinese have no love lost for Russia and Japan? The latter particularly?you know, the Rape of Nanking? By objecting to the one country that has not done Hong Kong, or China generally, any harm, it extols its virtues.

Some Filipinos of course have defended Tsao?s article by saying that, true enough, we are a nation of servants. No amount of denying that will make it go away, it?s time we took our licks if we can?t do anything about it. There?s that too. But it misses the point. The point is that the barb isn?t aimed at us, it?s aimed elsewhere.

Frankly, I don?t know how we can fail to understand or appreciate satire. We have a robust tradition of it. Jose Rizal was past master at it, writing slyly, funnily and bitingly about the Spanish rulers, especially the friars. But maybe it?s not just that tradition we?re losing, or have lost, it?s the capacity to read itself. Ultimately that may be the true satirical, ironical and cruel footnote on us:

We haven?t just become a nation of servants, we?ve become a nation of illiterates.