(Satire po)

WANBOL CAMPUS, Cubao– Once again, Tito Sotto’s alma mater has come out in full force to defend the comedian-turned-senator.

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Sotto, who is in hot water for portraying single mothers as “naano lang,” got a boost from Wanbol University, which staged a big rally in support of the beleaguered legislator.

“Wanbol will not take this anymore!” the university’s president, Liwayway Gawgaw Tapia, known as Miss Tapia, said to loud cheers from the crowd of 2,000 Wanbol students, faculty, staff and administrators. “They are attacking a brilliant leader, a deep and inspiring thinker.”

Sotto was criticized for his comments on Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo who he said was “naano lang” because she raised her children as a single mother. However, Wanbol Prof. Vic Ungasis, the university’s provost-bo, condemned what he called the “unfortunate and malicious misrepresentation of Sotto’s comments.”

Ungasis, who has a PhB in comedic studies, said Sotto is being criticized because his “penetrating and fearless scholarship style” may not be easily understandable to people outside the Wanbol community.

“Senator Sotto himself explained that his ‘naano’ comment was based on ‘salitang kalye,’ or ‘street parlance,’” Ungasis said.

“It was an astute observation based on Senator Sotto’s deep and penetrating socio-gagological analysis of Philippine street language and culture. It was not meant to be offensive. They are unfairly attacking one of the most brilliant scholars of our country.”

He said Sotto developed his own revolutionary and unorthodox approach to scholarship during his years at Wanbol University, where he was known as one of the institution’s leading intellectuals. He used this approach in his groundbreaking and incisive analysis of Filipino working class culture and linguistics.

“It is a form of scholarly research and inquiry that is unintimidated and willing to challenge conventional norms,” Ungasis explained. “Tito Sotto even came up with the name which we still use here at Wanbol: Totally Unrestricted Scholarly Observations. Or as we Wanbolers simply call it, T.U.S.O.”

Ungasis said that, on the Wanbol campus, Sotto was known as the staunchest advocate of the T.U.S.O. approach to academic inquiry. “He was the king of T.U.S.O.,” he said.

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“It’s just so frustrating how they keep twisting the ideas of this great man,” Ungasis said. “How can this be happening again to such a great intellectual!”

Ungasis was referring to the 2012 controversies when Sotto was accused of serial plagiarism, first by U.S. blogger Sarah Pope and then, in a major embarrassment to the Philippine Senate and Wanbol University, by of the family of the late American Senator Robert Kennedy.

Sotto denied those accusations. Ungasis also defended him back then, saying the plagiarism allegations were based on a lack of appreciation of Wanbol’s “unique and innovative” academic tradition known as Dexterous Uninhibited Generously Accessible Scholarship, known simply as D.U.G.A.S.

“Many of today’s universities cling to an outdated concept of ‘copyright,’ and academic scholarship,” he said in the one (and only) news report of the protests. “Wanbol follows a more forward-looking view. We affirm one’s ‘right to copy’ without being burdened by footnotes and attributions which, let’s be honest, are really so 20th Century.”

Ungasis defended Wanbol’s “open-source, freestyle approach to education,” saying scholarship Wanbol-style is “effective, efficient and environmentally-friendly.”

“By doing away with footnotes and citations, and even bibliographies, we’ve helped save trees by not using too much paper,” he said.

As Sotto reeled from another controversy, Ungasis shook his head as he recalled the 2012 attacks.

“They just don’t understand D.U.G.A.S. and they don’t appreciate T.U.S.O.” Ungasis lamented. “And they simply do not see what the Wanbol community has known for years — that Tito Sotto is the master of the D.U.G.A.S. and the king of T.U.S.O.”

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