As Manong Neal saw it

Bloggers are as opinionated a people as the opinion writers of newspapers like Neal H. Cruz. But while any Tom, Dick and Harry can be a blogger these days, not everyone can be a well-respected purveyor of opinions like Manong Neal.

We have known Manong Neal personally, and we can  say that we know the man too well also from his incisive writing, his divergent views, his pet peeves and the causes he had espoused.

Until he wrote 30 last Tuesday at the age of 85, he had been feeding the inquiring minds of readers of the Philippine Daily Inquirer for, as per PDI’s tribute to him, 21 long years. He will be missed.

Manong Neal was anything but a fence-sitter. He always called a spade a spade. Unlike many opinion writers who, in Facebook lingo are always trolling for “likes” from readers, he was unafraid to court the displeasure of his own readers and followers.

Case in point would be his angering many netizens for calling as “ugly” the underpass murals in Quezon City. As such, the "As I See It" title of his PDI column could not have been more apt because he called everything as he saw them.

In a way, despite his amiable mien and boyish smile, Neal Cruz’s journalism was Quixotic in the sense that he was never afraid to take a stab at the giants using only his pen.

Neal Cruz himself is a giant though, a towering icon of Philippine journalism because he always called a spade a spade and he never feared ruffling the feathers of the high and mighty, and even of his fellow journalists. –End-