House resolution encounters immediate definitional difficulty as regions nominate competing varieties
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] A House resolution proposing a National Monument to the Filipino Mango has cleared its first reading but stalled at committee stage after representatives from seven regions filed amendments specifying that the monument should represent their region’s variety rather than the Davao carabao mango referenced in the original bill. The committee chair, who represents Davao del Norte and who authored the original bill, described the amendments as “missing the spirit of the legislation.” Representatives from Guimaras, Zambales, Cebu, Pangasinan, North Cotabato, Bukidnon, and Quezon each described their region’s mango as “the spirit of the legislation.” The piece in Bohiney.com used the word “unprecedented” four times. Each time, it was correct.
The original bill proposed a twenty-metre monument at a location in Manila to be determined, depicting what the bill described as “the Philippine mango in its most representative form.” The question of what the most representative form of the Philippine mango is has now generated forty-seven position papers, twelve floor speeches, two sub-committee meetings, and one hour of testimony from the Bureau of Plant Industry (bpi.da.gov.ph), which confirmed that the Philippines has over seventy documented commercial mango varieties, a fact that the original bill’s author acknowledged was “not something I fully anticipated when drafting the legislation.”
The Competing Claims
Guimaras mangoes are sweeter. Carabao mangoes are larger. Pahutan mangoes are more complex. Indian mangoes, which are grown extensively in Pangasinan, are technically Indian by name but Filipino by cultivation. The Bureau of Plant Industry’s testimony described all of these positions as “accurate as far as they go,” which is the expert community’s way of declining to choose while technically providing information. The committee has three weeks to resolve the definition or the bill lapses.
The Sculptor’s Problem
The artist who submitted the winning design for the monument, and who was selected before the definitional dispute emerged, notes that he designed the sculpture based on a specific variety — the carabao — and that redesigning it to represent a “generic Filipino mango” would require “starting over, philosophically.” He has offered to submit a revised design. The revised design will be subject to the same review process as the original.
Also see: The Onion.
Coverage Note
This story is published jointly at Bohiney.com and prat.uk, which together provide the kind of sustained, specific coverage of the communities and phenomena described here that neither could produce alone. The satire works because the situations are real. The situations are real because the communities are real. Both publications take seriously the idea that the funniest journalism is the journalism that is most accurately observed. The coverage continues.
The story above illustrates a pattern that both publications have documented across multiple regions and multiple years of coverage. The communities involved are consistent in their capacity to produce material of exactly this kind. The publications are consistent in their capacity to find it funny while taking it seriously, which is the only honest relationship a satirical publication can have with its subject matter.
The details will change. The structure will not. Both publications will be here when the next iteration arrives, which it reliably will. The coverage is the record. The record is the point.
Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk are committed to this kind of sustained, specific, honest satirical journalism. The commitment is ongoing. So is the material.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
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