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Feb 09The implications of an expensive lunch…
Oh my, I say, if my countryfolk had landed in Normandy instead of US soldiers… not sure if the Nazi land batteries would have stood their ground or shared with us their finely brewed beer. Calderon Guardia surely kicked them out, but, given Costa Rica had been placed where Switzerland lies, our allegiance would likely had shifted perspective. And that is the very core of the issue: the determination of the Tico morality and its backbone.
The news programs –and specially Canal 7- made it sport to exploit the weakness of a group of the Administrative breed of the Social Welfare sector (the IMAS to be more precise, that body in charge of housing the poor). They engaged in a luxurious $1300 lunch on stipends of public funding. OH LA LA, as if it had never happened before, and what seemed the funniest to me: how my people were so eager to judge and condemn where most of them would have done exactly the same. Not that hypocrisy applies only to Costa Rica, but, in so few places is righteousness as well and randomly used as it is here. Had Jesus lived in Costa Rica, and while defending the woman that dared engage in sexual relations with a man who wasn’t her husband, despite “Christ’s” better reasoning many a man would not had even waited for him to finish his kind line before stoning her (makes me think of Monty Python’s Life of Brian).
Sometimes it takes these small demonstrations of public loathing for the larger and governmental entities to change and prove themselves worthy of approval and admiration; but, citing and editing the New Testament again: “It is easier for an elephant to pass through a needle’s eye, than it is for a Tico to enter the kingdom of Heaven”. I wonder often if the quest to punish criminals in Costa Rica serves no other purpose than that to lighten the souls of those who feel –against their better consciences- they could be subversively in the same position. Moral perfection is such a profitable flag here, most wouldn’t reckon buying it from the devil –maybe we owe this to our Spanish forefathers… YIKES!-
Surely, some of those involved in the incident resigned and agreed with the local media to purge the sin by public apology. The woman in charge of the organization even spoke in our congress of her flawless conduct and her disapproval of such pervasive act, while also commenting on how she felt victim of a political scheme by her party’s enemies… yadda yadda yadda, I wasn’t impressed.
Seems to me the advertising spots for the news hours have earned more from this faux pas than the nation did as a whole. Sensationalism was the winning end in this scandal and little else did. Corruption must be purged from the social consciousness before atonement kicks in, and all that social workers now fear is having reporters sneak in their papers as opposed to the people having them accounted for their service. Thoughts anyone?…