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This is why you can't trust anything a Filipino says half the time and just shows how daft the media really is here! There has been a hoax letter going around for almost ten years now and the Manila Bulletin had some guy write up an opinion piece about how shitty a person Art Bell is and how he hates Filipino's!

As I have found out myself, the older generation of Filipino's have no clue how to use the Internet properly, like even research on Google! As many people said in the retraction all the idiot writer had to do to validate it was to do a search on the internet and this whole thing would have been avoided! Just goes to show how stupid the editing staff is there at that paper.

If I was Art I would still sue those bastards as I don't see the retraction on the front page on the newspaper and the paper is run by incompetents to begin with.

BTW for all those wondering where Art lives in Philippines, the article says he just bought a condo in Manila which means he is probably living in one of the more expensive ones in Makati somewhere, probably Legaspi Village. I suppose if you walk around that area enough you might bump into him.

Now if a newspaper is doing this and can't get their facts straight, imagine what their school system is like? I've worked in a number of their universities and the staff and learning conditions are generally shit. IF the country doesn't get it's act together over the next 10 years, they are going to be in deep shit competing with the rest of the world.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/200 ... 9opi4.html

MEN & EVENTS
By Alito L. Malinao
‘Hate letter a hoax’–real Art Bell

Mr. Art Bell, a Nevada-based radio talk show host, strongly took exception to our column on Tuesday (February 17, 2009) entitled “The Ugly American.�

The column was based on an open letter that has been circulated among the members of the Filipino-American community in the United States. It was e-mailed to me by my friend, the lawyer Juliano “Jelly� Nacino, who got it in return from his nephew in the US.

Bell said that the letter was a hoax. He said he would never malign the Filipino people since he is married to a Filipina, Airyn, and they have a Filipino-American daughter. Bell was also married earlier to another Filipina, Ramona, who died in 2006.

How and why such letter has been circulated and who would gain from it, we really don’t know. Our efforts to search for the origin of such a fake letter proved futile.

From his website, I belatedly learned that Mr. Bell has denied the authoriship of such a letter several times.

Bell and other letter writers from the US have categorically stated that the hate letter was a hoax. We have no reason to doubt them.

Retraction and sincere apology

So, we retract the allegations that we have unwittingly attributed to him in our column and sincerely apologize for the pain and inconvenience that our column might have brought to Mr. Bell and his family.

Here is Bell’s letter:

“I am going to sue you. You have made a huge mistake. I will look for a front page retraction or you will be in court.

“What is the matter with you people? This is a decade old hoax. I am married to a Filipina. My daughter is half Filipina. I own a condo in Manila and will soon be back to hire a lawyer unless I see a full retraction and apology. What you have done could have been avoided by simply putting my name in Google and the word Philippines. You did not do your homework as a member of the press and it is going to cost your newspaper a lot of money.�

Here are key portions of some of the e-mails that we received in defense of Art Bell.

From Joe Kerr
(joekerr3@gmail.com):

In regards to the silly claims about the infamous Art Bell e-mail hoax . . . Yes it’s a hoax from a Filipino-American student at San Jose state during the early 1990’s . . . Art Bell is married to a Filipina and has denied these slanders to no avail . . . there’s always some idiot circulating this hoax.

From David Koran
(davek@cekor.com):

Everyone knows Art Bell did not write that letter you’re talking about. This was a typical hoax. I am very surprised you would actually base an opinion on this hoax. Shame on you Alito for issuing a violent statement against someone you do not even have proof wrote the letter. Art even said on radio he did not write it. Get your facts straight before you incite violence on someone. Maybe this should be the Ugly Columnist.

From Hugh Manatee
(hugh_manatee34@yahoo.com):

Mr. Malinao, I’m not going to be the only one to e-mail you this but that Art Bell letter you wrote about is a hoax that has been going around the Internet for years, and I mean close to 8 years already. In fact Mr. Bell is married to a Filipina. I am not really sure if you, Ms. Muñoz and Attorney Nacino are new to this thing called the “Internet� but please, you three have to have been hiding under a rock together for such a long time not to know that it is a hoax.

From bargain professor
wordpress.com:

You are supposed to verify facts and inform, not perpetuate long discredited stories. Don’t know how you could have verified it? Well, there’s this web page on the “Internet� called “Google� and the first thing people on this “Internet� do nowadays to verify something is to “Google� it.

I’m sorry for being sarcastic but I have grown really cynical of Philippine media. The least you can do is check your facts. Go for truth, not sensationalism.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/200 ... 9opi8.html

Thursday, February 19, 2009

LETTER

Our sincere apologies to Mr. Art Bell

In his column, Men and Events, last February 17, 2009, our columnist Alito L. Malinao quoted an open letter supposedly written by Mr. Art Bell, a radio talk show host in Nevada, USA, and a rejoinder from a certain Ms. May Muñoz, a Filipina.

The open letter, which was e-mailed to Malinao by his lawyer-friend, Juliano “Jelly� Nacino, has attributed to Art Bell some slanderous comments against Filipino women.

In two e-mails, Mr. Bell strongly took exception to the contents of the letter which turns out to be a hoax. He threatened to sue The Manila Times. Our Editor in Chief had a telephone conversation with him on Wednesday afternoon and conveyed our apologies and informed him that this written apology and an apologetic column by Malinao would appear today.

From Mr. Bell and more than a dozen of his admirers with US e-mail addresses, we have learned that he is married to a Filipina and has a Fil-Am daughter; that his late first wife was also a Filipina; that he has a condo unit in Manila; that far from being anti-Filipino, he is pro-Filipino; that the letter Mr. Malinao quoted is a hoax that had, in 2001, caused the Philippine Daily Inquirer the same embarrassing trouble we are now experiencing; and that over the years, Mr. Bell has consistently denied authorship of the hate letter, which has been widely posted on the Internet.

Failure to check veracity

Columnist Malinao failed to check the veracity of the hoax email, to ascertain the circumstances of Mr. Bell and to take other proper steps to determine the accuracy of every statement and allegation in the emails he received from the United States.

The Times’ Editor in Chief did not query Malinao about his Art Bell piece, following the paper’s policy of not subjecting columnists to censorship and mistakenly presuming that the columnist had exercised the elementary steps necessary to verify the accuracy of the email that turned out to be a hoax.

The Manila Times, which in no way agrees with the views expressed in the Malinao column, hereby retracts the statements and allegations the hoax letter attributes to Mr. Bell. We also do not agree with the tone and views written by the so-called Ms. May Muñoz quoted by Malinao in his offending column.

No malice toward Art Bell

We also wish to state that in no way did The Manila Times as an institution, and its editors, act with malice toward Art Bell (whom we, the editors, had not known of until we received his and his admirers’ and defenders’ e-mails reacting to Malinao’s column).

We sincerely apologize for the pain and inconvenience that Malinao’s column might have caused Art Bell and his family.

The Manila Times

Columnist Alito Malinao has also written his personal apology and retraction. It appears on the opposite page.

Original FAKE letter:

“As we’ve all come to notice, in the past few decades, Filipinos have begun to infest the United States like some sort of disease. Their extensive involvement in the U.S. Armed Forces is proof of the trashy kind of qualities all Filipinos tend to exhibit on a regular basis. You can see this clearly by studying the attitudes and cultural Icons of most Filipino Americans.

Are they really Asian? Well we’ve come to accept the fact the Filipinos come from a part of the world known as South East Asia. But the term “Asia� is used in the wrong way. You may notice that contemporary Filipino Americans try very hard to associate themselves with groups that we know as Asian. I cannot count the number of times I have seen a ‘ Third World ‘ Filipino try to connect themselves to the Chinese or Japanese people. There is no connection and here’s why. The Philippines is a Third World country. Nothing respectable has EVER been created by Filipino people during our entire human history. Young Filipino men in America have become obsessed with “import racing�. They have an enormously perverted affection for Japanese cars. It’s a common phenomenon. In their minds, these Filipinos somehow believe that they are Asian and that it somehow connects them to Japanese people and Japanese cars. They often take credit for the ingenuity of Japanese people and say how it’s an “Asian thing�. This term…�Asian thing� derived directly from African American slang “black thang.� “It’s a black thang.� “It’s an Asian thang.�

You can see the connection. It’s even funnier that, in Japan, Filipinos are heavily discriminated against. The only Filipinos that can live successfully in Japan are the Filipino prostitutes. But that’s the case for most Filipino people no matter where they live in the world. Now we’ve come down to this fact…and it is a fact.

Nothing in Filipino Culture can be seen as Asian. They have no architectural, artistic, or cultural influence which is in any way, Asian. Thinking of the great countries in Asia such as Japan , Korea , and China there is no way you can possibly connect the Philippine Islands. This assault by Filipino Americans to connect themselves with the great peoples of North East Asia is foul and disgusting. Try visiting a young Filipino’s web site too.

You’ll see something called the “Asian IRC Ring�. It has to do with the chat rooms. The most horrible thing about this is that these TRASHY people are trying to associate themselves with Asia again!! People in Asia don’t act like this at all. What we are seeing here is the natural Filipino in its element with full access to technology and this is how they act! You will consistently see this behavior over and over again.

Another interesting thing is that these “third world� people also frequent RC chat rooms such as Chinese, Japan and Asian. They must believe that they are somehow related racially or culturally to North Asians. But it’s completely WRONG! There might have been some distant contact With China and even less with Japan during World War II, but these people are actually more closely related to African Americans and Mexican Americans.

Do the parents of these young Filipinos know what’s going on? Would they accept this? I believe that they would and do. This is the natural “Trash� element in Filipinos manifesting itself. Nothing good has ever come from Philippines and I don’t believe anything good ever will.

Recognizing your Roots (A Message to Filipinos). To all Filipino people: Please recognize your ROOTS! You come from the Third World ! You country is a disgusting and filthy place. Most people there live in poverty! Your culture has MUCH MORE SPANISH influence than Chinese, and absolutely no JAPANESE influence whatsoever. People in Japan and China , d o not act like you. They do not constantly talk about sex and they have a MUCH HIGHER level of RESPECT for each other. There is NO WAY that you can connect yourself to Asia other than location.

Your culture and technological advancement does no! t even come CLOSE to What Chinese, people have done in the past and what Japanese and Korean people are doing now! Everything you do is distinctly Filipino. You cannot take credit for Japanese cars, video games, or Hentai! It’s not an “Asian thing� it’s an “American thing�. You have no concept of culture…no concept of Asian ideas or Asian philosophy! Can you demonstrate how you use Confucianism or Taoism in you everyday life?? You can’t. And you will NEVER be able to.

I understand that you are trying to create an identity for yourselves as young people… but it is NOT related to Asia. Your Identity is Filipino.

That’s all you are. Just Filipino. Think about what that means.[/b]

This was Art's reply back in 2001:

This From Art Bell:

AN Open Letter to My Listeners
July 1, 2001
Another event in the seemingly never ending strange series of events in my life occurred, which will prevent me from being on the air this week. A horrible Racist article which has been on the Internet for almost three years, despite all our best efforts, has just been published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (The largest circulation Newspaper in that country). This has resulted in hundreds of e-mails and death threats to me and my family. Even the slightest effort on their part, would have resulted in the truth before rushing to publish. The article appeared in the Entertainment section of the Sunday edition (July 1, 2001).
As many of you I hope are aware, I DID NOT WRITE this trash and never would, in fact my wife is half Filipino. It was originally sent from a computer located at U.C.S.D. in southern California. They have sent a apology which has been posted on this website (see below) for almost three years. Over that period of time EVERY inquiry has been answered by myself, my Webmaster and the Network.

We are presently taking all legal steps possible, however in the meantime there is a very real physical danger to my family and myself. This will require my full time attention for the moment. The Newspaper (as of this writing) still, has NOT published a Retraction, even though they have been served with a Demand Letter to do so.

The newspaper’s e-mail addresses are feedback@inq7.net, jvaruta@inquirer.com.ph, readersadvocate@inquirer.com.ph, should you care to help, by urging them to promptly retract this dangerous, reckless, thoughtless article. See you soon.
Art & Ramona Bell

Why would anyone want to frame Art Bell in a fake letter like that? He doesn't really have that many enemies and hasn't screwed anyone over, has he?