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Fame to the Rescue

The Filipino American community is getting smart. It’s using star power to push its causes! Natural causes, of course.

What does that mean, Emil? The finest acts seen on The Filipino Channel?

No, no, no. I’m talking real stars. Veritable balls of gas! Fil-Am stars!!! The stars that white folks know!

Sure, some of them may be a bit on the fake side. Maybe their nose used to be part of their neck, or their chin is now part of their eyebrows, but hey, that’s the stuff that makes Hollywood. As for the part that matters, the bloodlines — those are real. Here’s my Filipino lab test: if it can make a real decent chocolate meat/blood stew from a small vial, you’re in the club. You can’t hide your bloodlines for long, honey cakes. If you’re Filipino, or even part, we’ll sniff you out. So the big news this summer has been the emergence of real bonafide Hollywood celebrities to help with our issues.

And it’s about time. Wouldn’t you listen if Michael Jackson was the spokesperson for Big Brothers/Sisters’ Incorporated? Okay, how about Michael Jackson for the Vatican’s Priesthood recruitment! (How can you refuse this call? “Father Sam Wants YOU!”)

The point is people listen to stars. They’re famous. They have magnetism.

To front for a cause or an issue, you don’t need smarts, intelligence, or anything like that. Familiarity with subject matter? Optional. That’s why God invented speechwriters. Just bring your pretty face and your fame. Fame means you come with an audience, people who know you’re someone without needing someone to tell them you’re someone. You might be so famous they know you by your first name alone. Or by a single letter. You know what I mean? The hope is maybe, just maybe, the stars ball of gas will explode your issue, and expose it to a whole new group of people who just might say, “Gee, didn’t he play a male prostitute in that movie with Demi Moore?”

That’s star power. And boy, do Filipinos need them for their issues. The biggest one is that pesky Filipino veterans issue. They’re still demanding equity for veterans who fought side-by-side with U.S. soldiers in World War II. For years they’ve been denied benefits. Now the number has dwindled to 11,000 vets residing in the U.S. still looking for $15 million in health benefits.

Who’s going to lead that cause? Your hometown’s big time Filipino doctor? The girl who sings Karaoke on Saturday nights at Tito Rey’s? This year’s beauty queen of the United Visayans of the Allegheny Valley Incorporated?

No, no, no.

We need a Filipino American star!

So last month, there they were in Washington. Lou Diamond Phillips, formerly known as Lou Upchurch — now he’s “Up with Filipino.” Forget that he played Richie Valens, Mexican American, in La Bamba. Or the homeboy calculus student in Stand and Deliver? That’s what you call versatility!

Come on, he was born in the Philippines. Really. And he did play a bald Asian King in the King and I. Though it wasn’t clear if he was playing the King or Yul Brynner. Whatever, the man knows politics. More importantly, he’s hot on the gossip meter, known for having his wife leave him for lesbian pop singer Melissa Etheridge! We’ll get people’s sympathy for sure!

When Phillips stood before a congressional subcommittee this summer, he delivered his most important lines to date. A soliloquy on what MacArthur meant when he uttered the immortal phrase, “I shall return.”

He wasn’t talking about getting movies back to Blockbuster apparently. There was Lou, who sat and delivered. “It is my belief that he (MacArthur) didn’t mean that he would return empty-handed. It is my hope that he intended to return the loyalty, commitment and respect shown to him and to America by the Filipino people,” Phillips said.

“We have before us an opportunity to uphold the word of the America and to continue to be a shining light of democracy and fairness.”

Oh, the emotion. And you know he had a good subtext going, probably envisioning his first wife dressed up in MacArthur drag. But that’s not all.

This was a cavalcade of stars! There was Rob Schneider too! The son of real estate broker Marvin of Pacifica? Exactly.

Whose Filipino mother, Pilar, who even has a credit on the 2nd Annual Saturday Night Live Mother’s Day Special? Oh another half-Filipino? Which half? Not the half who starred in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. Not the half that starred in last summer’s The Animal? Not the half who’s career took off after the 1993 appearance with Ernie Reyes JR. and SR. in Surf Ninjas.

No, the other half. Perhaps he could do a slapstick version of the Bataan Death March for the congressmen.

But the real deal was actress Tia Carrere, the Wayne’s World babe who has come into her own. She’s now known for smoking big cigars, wearing stiletto heels and karate- kicking men’s asses!

If I were a congressman, I’d let her lobby me. Nothing to date has put the Filipino vets issue over the hump. Star Power never seemed so desperate.

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.