The ‘Beeb’, a.k.a the British Broadcasting Corporation, nicknamed such by Brits, in a playful nudge at the American ‘boob-tube’, is facing a firestorm of sorts over episode 4 of the new sit-com ‘Paul and Harry’ where a Filipina maid is shown being made to dance seductively to try to ‘awaken’ the libido of a seemingly impotent ‘bloke’, and later on being shooed away.

The 57-second clip which is on YouTube is being roundly denounced as racist and demeaning of Filipinas.

The British embassy in Manila has tried to distance itself from the controversy, saying only that the BBC is independent of the government and enjoys considerable editorial and production freedom.

Surely the Brits will likely just sit tight and wait for the headline-grabbing issue to blow over as it likely will.

In a sense, perhaps, the BBC episode might serve as yet another wake up call for how Filipinos, unable to find good jobs at home, continually do face such indignities and labor under even worse circumstances, with Maria Claras hard put to protect their virtue at the hands of lecherous masters.

Was the Beeb really being racist? Or was the episode also meant to remind us Filipinos how out society is consigning its women to lives of servitude, nay slavery, in foreign shores all in exchange for the precious dollars and pounds that prop up the Philippine economy?

It is undenied that Manila actively promotes the export of Filipino labor just so the economy can stay afloat.

With the global financial crisis possibly getting worse before it gets better, how many more replays will there be of the degrading BBC sit-com scene.

Over at the Philippine Senate and House, except for activist lawmaker Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, no one really seems to mind, with no one authoring a wider Resolution to express the Philippine legislature’s wholesale anger over the incident.

Don’t expect much. The others are all waiting to go on holiday after properly assuring their budget insertions and pork barrel allotments.

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