I’m Lady Gaga

By Alex P. Vidal

“I like being the underdog. I like turning around and shutting people up when they tell me I can’t.”—Stipe Miocic

IN American pop culture, my name is being lionized by both the young and old.

Fans love everything I wear, including my pink hair, pink lipstick, and the pink ribbons strapped around my neck.

In Philippine politics, I agonize from intrigues and insults from malicious and malevolent characters that surround the Angry Man; and sometimes from no less than the Angry Man himself, who is the “chieftain” of all the derogatory remarks heaped upon the country’s political dissidents, especially maverick women who are the major sources of his terrible insecurities and irrational fears.

His gynophobia, or the fear of being humiliated by women, is unparalleled as manifested by his supreme hatred for them.

Unlike Shakespeare who gave women central roles in moving the plot in his plays forward, making them the catalysts for the drama that unfolds in his tragedies, the Angry Man is allergic to intrepid women, including the seemingly timid opposite sex like me.

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Even if the world was watching, he jailed a feisty woman legislator; he ousted a no-nonsense woman Supreme Court chief; and he tried to jail a loquacious but award-winning woman journalist, and so on and so forth.

And who can forget what he did to me? After unceremoniously ousting me from his cabinet based on gossips and unfounded allegations, he continued to badmouth me like a derelict and questioned my culture mostly in his speeches delivered before a group of diplomats, businessmen, soldiers and local leaders.

God knows what would have happened to me if I weren’t the second in command, or if I didn’t have a lofty mandate from the people.

The Angry Man belittled my capability to lead the nation and even vowed to oppose my presidential bid, which he really did (but I doubt if he will succeed).

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Abetted by the scalawags who wanted to massage his ego, they fabricated stories and spread innuendos against me using his trolls on social media and other platforms in a desperate attempt to disparage me and my children.

Because they didn’t stop telling incredible lies about me, the incredible and awful truth exploded on their faces.

They are now shifting their rattled and demoralized forces on Bongit, the sore loser who summoned all the bad spirits in Mavroneri or the “Black Water” in the Peloponnese in a bid to take away the title I won in a neck-and-neck duel in 2016.

Now that Bongit is again back in the hustings for a rematch against me, his own demolition team has also been busy building up filthy stories to sabotage my candidacy and match, if not surpass, the bestiality being mobilized against me by the Angry Man’s dark forces midway in this presidential race.

Both the Angry Man and Bongit have an axe to grind against me and it’s unfortunate their animosity heated up at the time when they were supposed to join forces and easily steamroll a numerically inferior common enemy that is yours truly.

This means I am now facing a Joseph Goebbels in one corner and a Rasputin on another side all at the same time. The good thing, however, is their Goebbels and Rasputin might first tear each other apart now that the Angry Man and Bongit are at each other’s throats, before they could tackle me.

By the time they have emptied their bullets against each other, I may have already pulled away by a mile on my way to sweet victory.

I am not Nostradamus, but, modesty aside, I think I will be the third woman president in history after the final smoke has been cleared.

I don’t underestimate the Illiterate, the Macho Dancer/Call Boy, the Closet Queen, the Alalay, and the Labor Leader, but it’s destiny.

In 1986, when Bongit Sr. seemed to be unbeatable, heaven sent a housewife to implement the so-called wind of change.

In 2022, when everything seems hopeless, heaven will send Lady Gaga. That’s me. Please don’t forget my name. I’m Lady Gaga.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be editor of two dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)