A popular newspaper columnist reports on the social dangers and endless temptations of the privileged lifestyle press

“I know your type . . .  this is the worst nightmare. I’ve dreamed of this on the subway . . . if you weren’t a journalist you’d never be invited to anything hip.”
-Lou Reed

If you clink your wine glasses, they will come.

They’re the tiny niche of five o’clock society that thrives visibly from cocktail hour to cocktail hour, smiling from one paparazzi photographer to the next, all the way ‘til the after-hours private affair. It didn’t matter what was being launched in the tiny cosmopolitan biosphere that is Manila—whether it was the latest newfangled smartphone, or the most effective whitening lotion fortified with crystallized papaya extracts, or the newest “exclusive” club that only invited its 2,000 contacts on Facebook. As long as the hors d’oeuvres kept coming and the wine was pouring from Bacchus’ own private cellar, they were there.

The best way to tell them apart from the rest of the guests would be their signature bag—known as the “swag bag,” more coveted in these parts than an Hermès croc Birkin.

V.I.P.s? Hell, yes! They are the Very Important Press.

Also known by a few insiders (read: me and five other colleagues) by its affectionate moniker, the Pataygutom Press. If the days of Martial Law engendered “the mosquito press,” that brazen group of journalists with the audacity to decry the corrupt at the risk of losing their lives, today we have the kuto press, that audacious gaggle of fashion and lifestyle journalists with the perfectly-stained cheek to decry the kuripot at the risk of losing their loot. Mosquitoes, see, are small, but have a stinging bite. Kutos are small, but have the ability to suck your blood.

Would I really be on the guest list if I wasn’t going to write about it? Am I really just partaking of trojan hors d’oeuvres?

I say this all of course with tongue pressed firmly in cheek, for I’d be full of lice, er, lies, if I said I was outside of this little freeloading club. After all, I’ve been in the industry—a tiny branch of the fourth estate at that—for the past eleven years. It’s more than enough time to be familiar with this veneer of the “good life” engendered by the swag culture. (A little pause for the uninformed. “Swag” is synonymous with loot, booty, spoil, plunder, and “lurch with movement”—the latter describing the actions of some overeager ones reaching for said booty.) Swag comes in the form of anything from free lunches, clothes, makeup, phones, and even trips abroad replete with 5-star hotel accommodations. It’s the closest thing to living like rockstar royalty, in spite of having a paycheck that can hardly pay the gas bill. Ah, therein lies the greatest irony. These very same spoiled writers are known to have some of the economy’s tiniest paychecks—which don’t always come on time either. Imagine that, a low-paying career that cultivates a taste for Moët et Chandon as the years go by.

There are dangers, of course, to the cult of swag, especially in the Filipino context. For one, the inborn Pinoy trait of having an overriding sense of “utang na loob,” becomes a deterrent to fostering any kind of critical journalism in the lifestyle pages. Who cares if you found out that the age-defying lotion in your swag bag smells like two week-old durian? The Company paid for your dinner tonight after all, not to mention the full-page ads in the magazine you work for, so best to shut up and be nice, or not write anything at all.

Then there is the issue of press abuse. There are urban legends and blog accounts of notorious journalists and editors who negotiate with the currency of words in exchange for complementary hotel rooms, plasma TVs, and brand new cars. Fearing bad press, companies readily oblige to such demands. Tsk tsk.

Yet the biggest danger of the free lunch mentality is something that reaches a more personal level. It has to do with a burgeoning sense of entitlement and affectation of privilege if the parameters of the profession are left unchecked. The danger of actually believing oneself to be truly “V.I.P.” and deserving of all the accoutrements of a fancy lifestyle, when in truth you’re pretty much glorified paparazzi with a great vocabulary.

And that is the great equalizer. (At least for me.) The lingering shadow of doubt that I am only worth as much as the number of words I can churn out in a column. Would I really be on the guest list if I wasn’t going to write about it? Am I really just partaking of Trojan hors d’oeuvres? After all, if there was anything I learned in school that has been proven true time and again, it is the adage that there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

Truth to tell, I am writing this from inside my hotel suite. It’s one of those rooms that place dainty Belgian chocolates on down feather pillows on a queen-sized bed. The hotel is smack dab in the center of the swankiest district in a Southeast Asian city. I’m posted here for a few days, covering the launch of the latest sleek camera phone to hit the region. A bellboy has just come inside, presenting me with a bouquet of lotus flowers and a bowl of fresh fruits. The room is huge, I think I can do cartwheels and not hit any piece of furniture. The bathroom has three shower nozzles, two of which have a gentle vibrating jetstream designed to massage your arms so they don’t get too tired from shampooing your hair.

I’m studying the next day’s press conference schedule, which is riddled with amusing English phrases due to some literal translations from the local language. On Day Two, from 6 P.M. onwards, the scheduled activity for the Asian press is indicated as “Free and Easy.”

Free and easy. Well how about that, we writers have a lot more in common with sluts after all.