I was embarrassed, not startled, when Nena Liboro-Benitez asked Boy Morales where Joly went wrong (Political Tidbits, Apr. 20) . . . embarrassed for Mrs. Benitez because her question revealed her own insensitivity to what was going on around her and to her own role in Joly’s personal tragedy . . . embarrassed also for Boy who, if he were to answer the question honestly, would make Mrs. Benitez look bad.

Boy’s answer --- that Joly chose the wrong boss --- was the most gracious answer one could have given under the circumstances.

But Joly’s real problem was that he was a Benitez. Worse, he was THE Benitez who had to bear the monstrous burden of maintaining the myth that the Benitez family is the intellectual cutting-edge of our country’s political and cultural elite. The Benitez clan dumped on Joly’s already-bowed shoulders the burden with which they had saddled Joly’s Auntie Helen in the previous generation.

To maintain the myth, Auntie Helen actively cooperated in the placement of Philippine Women’s University’s best faculty members in various government jobs --- Estefancia Aldaba-Lim and Lucrecia Kasilag immediately come to mind --- but the most precious sacrificial victim she placed on the Marcos altar was her nephew, Joly, the best and the brightest of the Benitez generation that followed hers.

Over the past 20 years, Joly increasingly had to act as an employment agency, project-funder, and financier for his many far less-talented siblings and first cousins (Nena Liboro-Benitez’ children included), who, per the Benitez myth, honestly believed they were God’s gift to the Philippines and therefore deserved the best of everything. Even when Joly was still a graduate student in the United States, these cousins were already free-loading on him.

The burden of the Benitez myth bent Joly to the breaking point.

Joly was rammed down the throat of the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) ostensibly as one of O. D. Corpuz’ deputies with the same rank as Morales but in fact, as the First Lady’s surrogate in DAP. But the Benitez myth dictated that Joly had to be number one in name as well as in fact and so, Joly split DAP down the middle, and made his break-away the Ministry of Human Settlements.

And to remain number one, Joly had to be in the Cabinet and this required that he be elected to the Batasan. And so, we had Joly triumphantly claiming victory over Ninoy Aquino in the fraudulent election for the Interim Batasang Pambansa and, in the last Batasan election, Joly became Pasay City’s non-resident Assemblyman --- thanks to Mayor Pablo Cuneta, whom he thereafter ignored.

Joly’s incursions into electoral politics guaranteed that whatever professionalism and competence Joly may have wanted to instill in his people had to be gutted and sacrificed for the sake of turning out the vote.

Joly’s obsession with remaining first in the heart of the First Lady simply meant that he had to kow-tow to her every whim (even if were patently ridiculous), to praise each crazy idea as a work of genius, to try to implement every unworkable scheme, and in the end, to falsely claim "success" (e.g., the "kubeta" village).

Further, the Benitez myth dictated that Joly had to be an educator. And so, we had the hundred of millions of pesos poured down the rathole that is the useless University of Life while our public school system and the state universities went down the drain.

I laughed bitterly at the reference to Boy Morales as a friend of Joly. How quickly we forget Sheila Coronel’s interview of Joly wherein he said the First Lady was his only friend! No, apart from the First Lady, Joly had no friends; all he had were accomplices.

I choke even more bitterly at the way Joly’s own family is now making him the scapegoat for all the ills this country has suffered at the hands of the entire Benitez family. Auntie Helen, the new "Kissing Lady," busses President Aquino. Lydia Benitez-Brown now signs herself Lydia Brown, but still runs the multi-million peso TV program which Joly financed. Joly’s kith and kin in the Cultural Center and elsewhere act as if they never knew him.

Similarly, even now, Nena Liboro-Benitez wails, "Where did Joly go wrong?" But she doesn’t look at herself, her own family, and the clan she married into for the all-too-obvious answer.

The Benitez myth must go on, even if it means disowning poor, tragic Joly who destroyed himself trying to maintain the mystique.

JORDAN O. DY