Singer-actor Juan Karlos “JK” Labajo should have scolded not only the parents of kids who encourage their children to join singing contests, so that they can help support the family in case they win. He should have also bluntly addressed adult children who have also been unwittingly shaming their parents every time they dramatically announce that they’re joining a TV contest to help support the family, in case they bring home the bacon.
Labajo, soon after he was launched as a judge-mentor of the new ABS-CBN singing contest Idol Kids Philippines, wrote on his Facebook account: “Sobrang nakakalungkot para sa akin, kapag may isang eight-year-old na ‘Bakit ka sumali sa Idol Kids?’ ‘Para matulungan ang mga magulang ko (It’s so sad for me, when an eight-year-old — ‘Why did you join Idol Kids?’ ‘To help my parents).
“Why? Let the kids be kids. The kids deserve to be children. Bago kayo mag-anak, mag-ipon muna kayo (Before you have children, save first). Right? It’s just sad.”
Very young children are surely not aware that telling the world that they are joining a TV contest so they can help provide for the family in case they win is shameful for their parents. They can easily be forgiven. But not the grown-up children who make the same declarations on-camera when they join TV contests. They are subtly glorifying themselves even before the competition begins. They’re doing so at the disgrace of their poor parents.
Reacting to Labajo’s iconic rant, some netizens point out that such an admission ought to be considered “normal” in a country like the Philippines, where there’s an increasing number of families announcing in surveys their worsening poverty.
There’s a Facebook page (Showbiz Philippines) that recently published almost a thousand reactions to Labajo’s rant. Those who favor the singer-actor’s stance are outnumbered by netizens who feel it is “normal” for impoverished parents to implore their children to find ways and means to eke out additional income for the family.
“Child labor” is a stark reality in the country. Some movies and TV shows with “child labor” themes win awards, in case we have forgotten or were never aware of their existence.
Many of us knew young college dropouts who found both employment and romance abroad. Aren’t Ethan and Joy of Hello, Love, Goodbye such characters? Their love story thrilled us, Pinoys, and practically ignored that they have been enslaving themselves in a foreign country for their kith and kin in the Philippines.
Some sensible netizens assert that it is immoral to consider as “normal” and “natural “for the people to bring forth children for whom they can’t buy, or even just rent, breathable dwellings and nutritious food to sustain them.
So, JK, you may want to do a part two of your rant and castigate the grown-up children who thoughtlessly shame their parents for their inadequacies.
Does he have the “K” (“karapatan,” right in English) to nag parents and guardians who sweet-talk their talented children to join contests and possibly win so much cash and a house and lot for the family?
He is a product of The Voice Kids in 2015, when ABS-CBN held the franchise for the foreign show from the Netherlands. When he joined it, he was being raised by maternal relatives because his mother had died years after his American-German father had abandoned them. His relatives were not well-off, but he seemed to have not been encouraged to join the singing contest to raise funds for his guardians.
The Labajo kid easily became a favorite in the show because of his looks, singing prowess and impish sense of humor. Notes about him being an orphan raised by helpful maternal relatives began to go around when he was already being promoted as an ABS-CBN talent. He was never spoken of as a penurious, good-looking little mestizo boy with a rich musical skill.
Nora Aunor, the little girl singing champ of the pioneer TV contest Tawag ng Tanghalan, was fortunately not built up as coming from a poor Camarines Sur family and that she had to sell drinking water in plastic glasses at a train station to earn some cash for her siblings and meagerly employed parents. She couldn’t be presented as a poor little girl only because she was thought to be a soldier’s daughter stationed at the then-Nichols Air Base in Taguig. That soldier was her uncle, the husband of her mother’s sister, Belen Aunor.
Nora’s parents sent her to the Aunor couple so she could join singing contests that offer bigger cash prizes. By then, little Nora had won in various amateur contests in the province. Her musical aunt has already earned a reputation as a talent scout for winners in radio-TV singing derbies. Nora’s first contest using her real name did not bring her luck to win, so her aunt decided to make her niece use Aunor as a surname. The little girl started winning and at the age of 14, she emerged grand champion of the iconic Tawag ng Tanghalan.
The pretty little brown girl with the golden voice has no Aunor blood at all. She was the daughter of the couple Antonia Cabaltera and Eustacio Villamayor. It was only when she was being drummed up as a recording artist and young actress that her family’s economic status in bucolic Bicol region was revealed to her adoring fans.
Double Olympic gold medalist Carlos Yulo is from a family of working parents who have other children. They were not rich, but Caloy had never been reported as a young champion athlete who had to help his parents generate cash for the family.
Several young sports champs are from families on the lower, even the lowest rung of the economic ladder. But they are hardly motivated to shame their parents unwittingly by sharing their sob stories about their parents’ inability to earn so much cash for the family.
Anyone, rich or poor, has the natural right to join any legitimate event that may eventually lead them to enviable fame and fortune. But then the poor young talents do not have the right to indirectly shame their parents by announcing their poverty and inability to raise the family, and coax their kids to join contests that can contribute cash and other blessings to the family.
Meanwhile, we may all have to dismiss controversial filmmaker Darryl Yap’s clapback against Labajo and ABS-CBN as new show’s producers as part of Yap’s desperate efforts to be noticed from the sidelines of being litigated for cyber libel, courtesy of a case filed against him by actor-producer Vic Sotto whom Yap identified as a rapist in the teaser of a now practically shelved film The Rape of Pepsi Paloma.
In a Facebook post on 27June, Yap wrote: “Nagpapa-contest kayo sa bata na may millions of pesos na premyo plus dina-drama n’yo ang kahirapan nila... tapos pag nagsabi ang bata ng ‘kaya po ako sumali para maiahon ko sa kahirapan ang pamilya ko,’ nalulungkot kayo? (You’re putting a child in a contest with millions of pesos in prize money, plus you’re dramatizing their poverty... then when the child says, ‘I can join so I can lift my family out of poverty,’ you feel sad?)”
Yap went on to sarcastically advise ABS-CBN: “Magpa-contest kayo ng Bel-Air Got Talent o Forbes Park Idol para ’di kayo nalulungkot.” It was not ABS-CBN that declared being “nalulungkot.”
The other judges-mentors in the new show are Gary Valenciano, Regine Velasquez and Angeline Quinto. Idol Kids Philippines premiered on 28 June.