No, ‘The Lone Ranger’ isn’t PC just because the noble savage takes the central turn here. But it’s funnier and more fun, I would say, than Tarantino’s remake of Django as an avenging black man. Steeped in Amerian lore as we have been or maybe I should just speak for my generation of baby boomers the words “kemo sabe” have at one time or other issued from our lips. Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Sawi, but I seem to recall a conversation I had with the esteemed poet and magus Cesar Ruiz Aquino, way way back in Dumaguete City, when we bandied about with the phrase. Of course I was Tonto to his Lone Ranger. But still he gave it back to me, every time I called him Kemo Sabe. As we shall soon see, we were both quite prescient, if not entirely on the spot, with our elliptical recognition of the phrase as maybe a spin-off from the Spanish “Quien sabe?” (who knows?) or “quien no sabe” or the corrupted“qui no sabe” which roughly means “he who knows nothing.” In today’s parlance, “clueless.” It also sounded close to “No savvy?” Even to the Chavacano “aqui sila tumba” despite its remote boast of a meaning which is “here they fall.” Yeah, sounds close; but hey, dude, no cigar. In the latest reincarnation onscreen of The Lone Ranger, Johnny Depp as Tonto tells Armie Hammer as the Masked Man that kemo sabe means “wrong brother.” In this Disney production, Tonto Read More …