Toni Gonzaga (right) during the Q&A with contestant Hannah Sison
Okay, okay, I think this is going a little too far. Everybody is jumping on Toni Gonzaga and her fans are fighting back. This is not a healthy situation so I have to speak up.
But first, an apology. When Toni was up there doing the Q&A with a very quiet Xian Lim, I was laughing in the midst of my taking notes for my blog. My seatmates were laughing too and so was the entire Araneta Coliseum.
But now that I have hindsight and now that I have reviewed the videos, I realize that just because an entire Coliseum found it funny, it doesn’t make it right.
Now I feel awful about laughing because it was at the expense of the contestants and I want to tell each one of them that I am sorry.
Just today I passed by a cubicle at an office I was visiting and I heard people laughing about Hannah Sison and her Chandelier earrings because of Toni’s joke. They remember her not for being a beauty queen but for the joke about her earrings. I felt so bad.
It just shows that the things we do and say may seem innocent at the moment but can have hurtful repercussions in the long run. I would never want to be the public butt of someone’s seemingly innocent joke.
Going back to Toni, I think we need to pull back and dial down our criticism of her. Its becoming too personal na rin kasi. She deserves the same respect that our beauty contestants deserve even if some of us feel Toni went a little too far.
Of course it would be good to hear from her as well. Maybe if she could tell us why she took that direction in her hosting style, it would help.
I am also glad that most of the commenters on my blog have tempered their criticism and that the pros and antis aren’t fighting each other. At least dito sa blog ko. I know my world revolves around pageants but I will be the first to say na pageant lang ‘to, let’s not lose our inner beauty queens (and handsome kings) and be gracious to each other and even to those we feel are in the wrong.
There is much to learn from this issue but mud-slinging won’t help. Hinay-hinay lang mga friends!
