Deconstructing the Hayden Kho sex scandal: The free-for-all (Part 3 of 3)

"[A]re celebrity sex tapes becoming the new porn? ...What kills me is that once these sex tapes get leaked....all hell breaks loose!" goes a post on Blogxilla.com.

Sex videos can make or break a celebrity. American debutante Paris Hilton rose to fame (some say infamy) after her video with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon made the rounds. Hong Kong actor Edison Chen's promising career, on the other hand, was derailed after he was involved in a sex photo scandal in 2008. Singaporean nobody Gary Ng, however, gained online notoriety by filming at least 33 sex videos of himself with several women and posting them on websites.

"Philip[p]ines has their very own answer to Hong Kong's Edison Chen and Singapore's Gary Ng, in the form of Hayden Kho," says a post on the blog Wayang Times.

Dr. Hayden Kho Jr. might have trumped Ng by at least seven videos; according to Inquirer.net, he allegedly has at least 40 videos of his sexual escapades in his personal collection. Kho is now hinting that two of his friends are behind the proliferation of the videos on the Internet and the streets, although one of them, Erik Chua, has issued a statement that he had nothing to do with it.

Kho's lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, denies that there are 40 videos. "I told him to tell me the truth because I am his lawyer, he said that there are three women it is not true that there are 40 videos," GMAnews.tv quotes her as saying.

"The scandal busted all the box office records (in Quiapo), it sells like hotcake[s] in all the pirated video store[s] all over the country, breaking the sales record set by the Calapan Scandal in 2004," observes blogger Master Betong.

Why?

Aside from the videos, speculations as to the whys and wherefores of Kho's acts also run rampant on the Internet. Some wonder about his state of mind: Did he act on a compulsion when he made the videos, and was that compulsion due to mental instability, or was it drug-induced?

"[I]f you are a sane person, in respect to a woman, who was a part of your life, why was it needed to share the private moments to anybody, especially a friend?" blogger Warm Stone asks. "[W]ho knows it was ego boost that prompted Kho to tell a friend about the video that his partner was unaware of? Maybe he is sick? Maybe he was being immature that time?"

According to Kho's lawyer, he has admitted that his "perversity" is an illness and that he is currently undergoing counseling. However, she has also mentioned that Kho admitted to her that he was on drugs when he took the videos. Kho has also alleged that actress Katrina Halili supplied him with the drugs and that she knew she was being filmed. Halili, who has admitted to being one of the women in the videos, had filed a complaint against Kho saying that the videos were taken without her knowledge and consent.

"[T]he Hayden in the videos is not the same Hayden now. Those videos were taken two years ago. He has since reformed," Kapunan is quoted on Inquirer.net. She added that Kho has consulted a psychologist and a priest and has already undergone "drug rehabilitation."

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago stated that an insanity plea will be hard for Kho to prove in court. He would have to prove that he was "so far removed from reality that he no longer has a clear grasp of reality as all the rest of the community sees it," Santiago said. However, he "appears to be fully cognizant of reality. He has never appeared in public that he has indicated other signs of insanity. So he cannot claim that overnight that he became insane."

Neal Cruz postulates that at the very least, Kho has an inferiority complex. "Why would anyone want to have a video of such an intimate and private matter as lovemaking? And having almost the whole world see it on the Internet?"

Et tu, brute?

Many politicians were quick to react when the scandal broke, not the least of them Senator Bong Revilla, who denounced Kho in a privilege speech in the Senate. Others have issued official statements on the issue and have began drawing up bills against cyber porn, in what has come to be perceived in some quarters as "disproportionate outrage."

"[A]gainst the current furor over Dr. Kho's sexcapades, the righteous anger and moralistic outrage and the fuss made over these heinous products pale considerably in comparison," the Inquirer's Rina Jimenez David writes. David points out that other women who were involved in past scandals had worse fates than Halili, because they weren't celebrities. For example, in the case of Nicole and Vanessa, the young women who complained that they had been raped by American marines, "despite the fact that it wasn't just only the women who were violated - our sovereignty, our legal system, and dignity as a nation had been raped as well - national anger in the scale we were experiencing these days has been hardly palpable," she says.

"It's unbelievable that a Philippine senator wasted an entire privilege speech crying blood and thunder and spitting venom all because of private sex videos that became public. Anti sex video bills are hurriedly filed and it's all the media can ever talk about," comments prominent komiks creator Gerry Alanguilan. "There's no need to froth at the mouth and pass new bills while crying holy indignation like it's something alien to you. Just ENFORCE the laws we already have."

Questions remain as to why much ado has been made over the affair. Are Filipino politicians milking the issue for all the media mileage that it is worth, in view of the coming elections? Are they playing up the issue to obfuscate bigger problems?

"This Dr. Kho affair is yet another example of political showboating by an attention-starved trapo to gain acclaim," a reader of the Philippine Star opines.

"[T]he question isn't really what happened?-- the question is which of the things that happened is more interesting?" observes blogger Mikael de Lara Co, who postulates that the scandal is being blown out of proportion to draw attention away from issues such as the ethics probe being faced by Senator Manny Villar. "Ang galing nu'ng pagpaplano nito, 'no, [Everything was well-planned, wasn't it] and everything in short notice. Invisible hands at work (okay, maybe,)" he comments.

Concerns are also being aired as to the laws that might be passed as a result of the scandal.

"[T]his scandal shows clearly the Philippines' near vacuum with regard to policies regarding the onset of digital and online technology here," columnist Ike Suarez points out. "True, the Hayden Kho sex video scandal illustrates that the onset of the Internet has brought not only benefits, but social problems as well. But it could also serve as a wakeup call for the Philippines to finally address such issues."

"The response in Congress to the Halili-Kho drama is the introduction of bills that would strengthen censorship and widen the definition of pornography. These bills must be studied and debated conscientiously. Censorship is anathema in a democracy. Pornography or obscenity is difficult to define. As things stand, many of our movie reviewers/censors see things in black and white. Any depiction of sex or of the human body is considered smut. They do not appreciate that an explicit scene is integral to the movie, that it must be considered in context. They miss the nuances and subtleties of occasional candor," says an editorial in the Manila Times.

A folk hero?

Not only is the Hayden Kho sex video scandal generating buzz on the Internet, but it has also invaded the streets of the country, and not just the actual proliferation of the videos. The scandal has become the national obsession du jour.

"Everybody's talking about it: drivers, office clerks, janitors and security guards, doctors and nurses, executives, government employees, vendors; in buses and jeepneys, in coffee shops, in offices, in hospitals, at parties, in schools, in marketplaces. It is in the newspapers, the television show-biz gossip talk shows and the radio programs," columnist Neal Cruz comments on the Hayden Kho scandal.

On the Internet, not everyone castigates Kho for his actions. Despite warnings that linking to or posting the videos would open site owners to liability, bloggers still do so. Even those who have blogged about it but avoided posting links or videos receive requests. Some bloggers have admitted to watching the video and have posted their reviews, among them quite explicit commentaries.

"Now Hayden Kho has become a sort of a folk hero to most full-blooded males, what with his beautiful conquests. While I would also like to call him 'idol,' I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now," says blogger Gout Stricken Pilgrim.

Some people are viewing the videos to find out what the fuss is about; others, so as not to be left out of the latest craze in town, even if they normally do not view porn. Quite a few discuss it on their blogs as it is a golden opportunity to get site traffic.

"[A]ll of us are now exploiting Hayden Kho and his sex videos," observes blogger Kawebspy. "1. Politicians use the issue to gain popularity especially that the election is coming; 2. Pirates are making money with the sex videos that they don't own and don't have authority to sell; 3. Bloggers, and webmasters are making money from the issue by writing articles about it and making them popular in the field of SEM [Search Engine Marketing]; 4. Porn [w]ebmasters are making money by selling the copy of these videos to their subscribers."

Arguably, the attention paid to the scandal only inflates it even further. The more the government cracks down on the distribution of the videos, the more determined some people are to obtain and view a copy.

"[T]here is something the public can do to stop this. They must register their protest and denounce these purveyors by not patronizing these videos," adjures a Cebu Daily News editorial. "This may be next to impossible but if more people refuse to buy these videos from the marketplace or over the Web, some of these purveyors will think twice about doing their deed. If people are not buying, these unscrupulous entrepreneurs will stop selling."

In the end, when it comes down to the whys and the wherefores, the Hayden Kho sex video scandal has pushed a lot of buttons in Philippine society. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, ranging from who should be held responsible to why it should not be made into a big issue. The final question is: What does this scandal say about our morality and our sense of priorities as a people?

"[A]t least Hayden Kho can always say he believes in transparency and parading the naked truth. Not so the prominent people who screw us by pocketing our taxes and hide the evidence by screwing the whistleblowers some more. Not so the prominent people who get caught in tapes, even if they do not make those tapes themselves, plotting to screw the voters and who apologize later but not for the crime, only for being caught. Not so the prominent people, the emperors and empresses, who like to believe they are wearing the finest clothes in the world when they are in fact running around stark raving naked. And Revilla calls Hayden Kho the sickest man alive?" comments columnist Conrado de Quiros.

This article is the third of three installments. Read the rest here on the Philippine Online Chronicles.

Deconstructing the Hayden Kho sex scandal: The facts (Part 1 of 3)
Deconstructing the Hayden Kho sex scandal: The fallout (Part 2 of 3)

Photo of Katrina Halili is a low-resolution screencap of a television performance and is believed to fall under fair use.
Photo "I did it - Edison Chen" by wZa HK on flickr; CC License BY-NC-ND-2.0.
Photo "Bootleg DVDs" by Viewfinder JCO on flickr; CC License BY-NC-ND-2.0.

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