One of the most difficult things to watch when a trapo is being interviewed is having to listen to one of the most “traditional” brazen lie before an interviewer who has not only failed to do her homework but is very visibly starstruck that she sinks into sap-filled political correctness and cannot ask pointed questions even when confronted with falsehoods and fabrication.

“Why should a politician’s deliberate distortions be rewarded and be effectively encouraged with a stupid smile?

Media has both a duty and the responsibility to ferret out, uphold and vigorously defend the truth especially when this is so cavalierly assaulted in the very arena where media practitioners work. Why should a politician’s deliberate distortions be rewarded and be effectively encouraged with a stupid smile?

In the weeks to come, as the campaign period for the 2019 midterm elections throttles into a higher gear via mass media, we can expect more of the same absurdities to accompany the default dog and pony shows, the “baby kissing” and the circus acts our congressional clowns are so competent at that they rival real comedians and comics.

Note how a pedigreed senator of the Republic had donned his typical Ninoy Aquino spectacles and had appeared in flip-flops and pajamas to accommodate the gossipy theme of a morning talk show targeting housewives and househelp.

A poor facsimile of the original he mimics, the same senator of the Republic then appeared in a TV game show, there bereft of dignity and circumspection and totally ignorant of the profound effects of his degrading of the stature of the Senate as he embraced insipidity to improve his failing ratings.

His stunt almost rivals the utterly tasteless proposal for marriage broadcast over a kitschy talk show by a losing presidential candidate some years back.

There is little, however, that can degrade our institutions more than a lie.

Last week, in an exclusive interview with Liberal Party leader Senator Francis Pangilinan, responding to two recurring issues on his party’s ambition to wrench the Senate back and wield it against the Duterte administration, Pangilinan either resorted to sheer falsehoods or revealed incredible ignorance of simple arithmetic.

One issue was on the rationale to field only eight party candidates, one third short of a field of 12 and labeling the team as Ocho Diretso (Eight Straight).

He said, “Since voters often do not vote for all the candidates of a particular political party, fielding eight candidates eliminates the possibility of having one-third of the senatorial ticket ending up in defeat.”

For one, labeling the LP candidates under a collective block tag presumes voters will aggregate, thus debunking his spin.

For another, leaving one-third open allows fluid dynamics to occur where gaps are filled by non-LP candidates. This displaces LP candidates lying at the margins. Validated by survey rankings, this idiotic strategy has already pushed Manuel Roxas to the 13th slot where any non-LP candidate who ranks higher then the eighth is more desirable than the 2016 loser.

Pangilinan’s conehead arithmetic is even more evident when asked about the LP’s chances of winning.

He uses an “apples and oranges” comparative analysis based on the 2016 presidential elections to cite a 61 percent probability that the LP will retake power. Sixty-one percent is a rounded off number comprised of the percentages won by all presidential candidates other than Duterte.

Pangilinan takes an incredible leap of logic and assumes the votes cast for Poe, Binay and Santiago will pool with votes for Roxas and create a 61 percent probability for the LP.

The guy is incredibly weak with numbers. Had Pangilinan used this same equation to compute the chances of the LP, then by simply adding everyone else’s percentages including Duterte’s winning votes, he would have seen that the probability of the LP’s winning is a mere 23.45 percent or less than a fourth of the votes cast in 2016.

To validate using Pangilinan’s simplistic 2016 algorithm and updating to 2019 with recent approval surveys, the chances of the LP remain pegged between 23.45 percent to 24 percent, thus, establishing the LP as the Loser’s Party.