Fence Sitter
A. R. Samson
The superstitious lot among journalists, especially those who grew up before the notebook became a gadget rather than a bound book of blank pages, must be a bit frazzled with the number 30, an anniversary this paper will be commemorating this month. This is after all the symbol used to end a piece. And many a journalist or those in the profession are said to have “written 30” when they have departed from this world.
There are many theories on the use of 30 to symbolize the end of a piece. One has to do with the days of telegraphed stories with the Morse code for “the end” the same as 30. The more convincing other theory is that XXX to denote the end corresponds to the Roman numeral for 30. The triple X thereafter was also co-opted by the porn industry as a classification that promised to give more anatomical details without speaking parts.
This year too, Fence Sitter celebrates its 30th anniversary as a column in this paper plus three additional years in its predecessor publication. In 1983, I had been submitting sporadic pieces that got published in Business Day with my by-line. I consequently begged then publisher-editor Raul Locsin (the founder of this paper) to give me space for a column, “even if the paper already had more columns than a Greek temple” — although that wasn’t really true as there were other broadsheets that had thrice the number of regular albeit infrequent contributors.
Based on no market research, I believed a humorous column on economics was what the readers needed. I suggested several names for the corner including one which I briefly used “Left Field” which Raul junked for its unintended ideological undertone. I am after all a card-carrying rightist. And so, the twice-weekly column started in January of 1984 and turned into its current thrice-weekly version very soon after that.
I am sometimes asked how I choose my topics as they seem to be unrelated most of the time with current events, although they sometimes are. I wanted to make economics more accessible to the man on the street, or even to the businessman who does not automatically accept that competition can be good for his business. He just has to be given the example of food courts and cinemas in malls.
Economics nevertheless seems too rich (not to mention boring) a fare to digest three times a week. So, the corner strayed into politics, both national and corporate, but mostly the latter. Backstabbing, reorganizations, new leadership, pompous assurances from CEOs that people are more important than paper clips, excuses for yearly poor performance, and credit-grabbing are the corporate versions of movie gossip, so rich in amusing possibilities.
The observant eavesdropper does not run out of topics to write about. Topics for subsequent columns are hoarded and noted on my mobile phone. Topic-hunting is a trivial pursuit that I have trained myself to master for the last 33 years. And if nothing comes across the pipeline of my imagination or I am going on an extended holiday, I cheat and recycle past columns, and my alert editor more often than the times he calls my attention, catches me in this literary misbehavior. (Recycling, it seems, is not applicable to literary waste.) Anyway, I never post the old article in its original form but tweak it, sometimes a lot, to come up with something new, rather like changing the upholstery of one’s old furniture or repainting the house’s façade. And anyway even I sometimes don’t recognize it in its present form.
When I am introduced as a columnist (which rarely happens anyway) I am inevitably asked what I write about. This question should not be construed as a genuine thirst for an answer, which if withheld, will throw the interrogator into an anxiety attack. No, the nice person is just making conversation. Providing too many details, as I am now doing, is hardly expected much less welcomed by a casually met stranger. It is enough to give a brief and ambiguous reply like “social commentary.” This response satisfies the ritual show of interest to allow moving on to more interesting topics like liaisons, scams, and lost wealth.
The goal of this column had always been to lighten up both in weight and obscurity the “dismal science.” This task has also forced me to brush up on my knowledge of economics, even if this has been first an academic and then a life-long pursuit. Money lost in economic downturns does not make for any kind of laughter but the maniacal one.
I’m never sure who gets to read the pieces that I have been churning out thrice a week for 33 years now. I suppose there is a fictitious reader that every columnist relates to. I imagine my reader too. She is literate, well-read, informed, engaged in abstract thinking, compassionate, sober at all times, and capable of laughing at herself. And if I use the feminine form for my constant reader, maybe it is merely wishful thinking.
I have to confess to my editor that this piece has parts that have already come out before. Maybe, old people like me like to repeat themselves… having forgotten what they already wrote six years ago.
A. R. Samson is chair and CEO of Touch DDB.
ar.samson@yahoo.com
