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Among the Intellectualoids
Arguing With Bono
Rocker and philanthropist Bono wrote an op-ed for the New York Times to make two points: that "the virtual Obama is the real Obama," and that "the man might deserve the hype."
Bono is not the only well-known musician who thinks kindly of President Obama. Agnostic though he claims to be, Sting, the former frontman for The Police, joked October 28 that in many ways, Obama is "sent from God." Sting also thinks that Obama is "exactly what we need in the world." That you and I might say the same about each of our friends seems not to have occurred to him.
Sting describes the president's critics as "aggressive" and "fear-filled." ("Please don't stand so close to me.") For the president himself, the man feels gracious forbearance. ("Roxanne! You don't have to wear that dress tonight!") Oddly, however, Sting's praise never rises to the level of an actual argument.
Sting calls himself frustrated because "we seem to be living in a currency of medieval ideas." Unfortunately for the cause of legitimate disgruntlement, medieval ideas include everything from double entry bookkeeping to separation of church and state. Either Sting's interviewer did not think to ask a follow-up question about which medieval ideas (Free inquiry? Flying buttresses?) frustrate the bass player, or an editor who dislikes cheap entertainment robbed the rest of us of a chance to read further thoughts on the subject.
Bono deserves more of a hearing, if only because he actually tried to arrange the driftwood of hope into a case for supporting Obama.
Bono likes that the president reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the Millennium Development Goals in his speech to the United Nations. "For me," he wrote, "these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity -- if the words signal action."
Aye, there's the rub. Had he given more thought to the matter, or been familiar with "Geraghty's Law" (that every Obama promise comes with an expiration date), Bono might have recycled "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
The main purpose of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG one of eight) is to halve extreme poverty worldwide by 2015. The late, great Norman Borlaug did his part to make that happen, but Borlaug and his dwarf wheat were not also pushing for gender equality, universal primary education, and widespread access to antiretroviral drugs, as the United Nations is trying to do.
In Bono's surprisingly blinkered view, it took Barack Obama -- the president whose administration uses fallen warriors for photo ops while carping about any journalism it doesn't like -- to make the world see that "America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology, and extreme climate change."
"Extreme climate change" is the weakest link in that chain, and "extreme ideology" (no fair guessing which one) the most euphemistic. Has no one told Bono that what used to be called "anthropogenic global warming" now approaches on the cats' paws of dubious data from the dark end of the street? Does Al Gore have the Irish rocker believing that that is where we like to meet?
Because he understands the power of the bully pulpit, Bono is confident that Barack Obama's words are sometimes "lifelines" for people in the farthest corners of the globe.
Here's the thing: lifelines only work when they are tethered to something solid and predictable. Although Bono suggests that "the idea of America" still rings like a bell, he is also convinced that Team Obama is giving this country a "re-branding," and (though Bono can't bring himself to say so) no one knows yet how that will turn out, much less whether it is virtual or real.
Bono supports the president, and the decision of the committee whose Nobel Peace Prize nomination process closed less than two weeks after Barack Obama took office, because he thinks America might soon get "soft power" right. More than that, Bono reads this year's Nobel Peace Prize not as a housewarming gift from five Norwegian leftists to an affable Chicago pol with Secret Service protection, but as a gesture from the rest of the world that challenges every American citizen by saying "Don't blow it." He means to be hopeful, and so does not realize that by interpreting the Peace Prize that way, he makes it into an instrument of condescension or threat.
For Bono, a man who has and deserves his own accolades, what matters, and what he thinks Obama gets, is that Americans are like singers, and singers want to be loved.
Well. My go-to people for all things musical are an entrepreneur who turned harmonica-playing prowess into a career, a songwriter who runs a record label in Los Angeles, and a singer with Broadway-class pipes who cantors at Catholic parishes in Las Vegas. Two are men, one is a woman, and all three are model citizens who have enriched my life more than I know how to say. With friends like these, I don't need to read valentines for singers from Bono.
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Mary Louise| 11.2.09 @ 7:10AM
As a rocker not named Bono observed years ago, it's roadies who "roll them cases and lift them amps," and roadies who "haul them trusses down and get 'em up them ramps."
IINM, aren't those lyrics from Jackson Browne's Stay?
Surfeit and the frippery it produces.
I'd like to say that she should have realized this during the campaign, but that would be short-changing her willingness or need for fact before sensation.
His cheer leaders, by elevating him to a stature he in no way merited, are now in a situation in which contortion is necessary. And would be entertaining if not so dangerous.
Frank Luntz said that running against Obama is starting to become "safe," though he recommends holding off a bit more. Who to run against then? Nancy Pelosi. Because she is what came with the presidential suite.
Stupidity and callousness to be sure. Undegirding it all? Ingratitude.
Alice Moore| 11.2.09 @ 7:34AM
Artistes and composers of much greater genius than Sting and Bono have supported radicals. Beethoven was a big supporter of Napoleon. The Eroica Symphony was dedicated to Bonaparte. Wagner had supported a French Revolution type Uprising in a German city. It goes to show that artistic genius doesn't equal intelligence.
Richard Baker| 11.2.09 @ 7:42AM
Bono=Eurotrash. Good riddance.
Pingback| 11.2.09 @ 7:59AM
The American Spectator : Arguing With Bono » Process Less links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 11.2.09 @ 8:07AM
Bono & Sting: Shut the “F” up and just sing one of your hit songs. Nobody wants to hear about what you have to say about American Politics, except maybe our current President (he’s in need of a good friend right now)!! America has done more “Good” for the World, than any other Country in the last 100 years, but it’s never enough for anybody, is it? Somehow, we still seem to owe everybody even more?
England and Ireland “owe” the United States, for not speaking German today (do you remember that one Sting?). So why don’t you go ask the British to do more (Sting), or the Irish to do more(Bono), or how about the French, or Russians, or the Chinese to do more? The United States has given more, and done more, and bled more, then all of those Countries put together. And we certainly have spent more money, helping other Countries out, than any other Nation in the World too.
We (the USA) don’t hold all the answers, to every problem facing every Country in the World today, so don’t even ask us to try (and by the way, we’ve got our own problems to deal with right now, thank you very much). So go bother somebody else for a change Bono, ask somebody else to step up to the plate this time Sting, we’ve done everything we can do. And while you’re at it, piss us off some more, then enjoy the empty concert halls, all across America on your next tour. “In the name of love” Man, America made you both (U2 & The Police), and we can break you just as easily. So just stick to the music business, and butt out of American Politics.
stehanie| 11.2.09 @ 8:25AM
Hey Sting, your GD right we're "fear-filled" and we're not afraid to say so. Those fools in the WHouse are doing their best to, in the words of the one you so admire, "transform America". We will fight tooth and nail to stop him and his cronies. My Sting CD's are going to the trash bin.
Louis Jenkins| 11.2.09 @ 8:51AM
Yes Stepahnie, but you left out another qualifier: "We're getting mad!!"
stephanie| 11.2.09 @ 6:48PM
Yeah Louis, I forgot. WE ARE PISSED AS HELL!
JP| 11.2.09 @ 8:32AM
Bono, to his credit praised President Bush for the amount of money his administration poured into Africa to fight AIDS. Bono caught quite a bit of flack for that one.
As Alice Moore reminded us, artistes don't have such a great track record in politics. I might add to her list the infamous Bertolt Brecht. Yes, the man who gave us Mac the Knife (albeit, through Nietszche) was an unrepentent Stalinist. Of course, his love affair with Communism didn't prevent him from making millions through royalties and state subsidies.
Louis Jenkins| 11.2.09 @ 8:48AM
Sting's comments last week chaffed my backside. Am I supposed to fall to my knees in rapture? As for Bono, go hang out on a roof somewhere and diddle out a few tunes. So what does a failing rock star do when he no longer sell albums? Latch on to politics or a buzzy international religion like global climate change. In the past we could just turn off the radio, click on past MTV, or throw Rolling Stone back in the magazine box, but a president's coat tails? What an ingenious way to maintain stardom!
Tish| 11.2.09 @ 9:09AM
What Bono doesn't realize is that Obama is a true believer, so certain that his Marxist/socialist vision is the right one neither logic nor history can penetrate the shell of his self-importance. Both men are arrogant in their ignorance.
Michael Dooley| 11.2.09 @ 9:30AM
For those of us who prefer their rock to be blues-based and abhor the "euro-tech", U2 haven't been worth a damn since their high point of Joshua Tree. We much prefer the soft Irish Christian pacifism of the early U2 to activist Bono of the 90's and 00's.
The trouble with entertainment hot shots like Bono is that they are lauded for their intentions; but they are never held accountable for the actual harm their politics do to the very people they think they're helping.
victor| 11.5.09 @ 9:20PM
Actually, Achtung, Baby! was as good as Joshua, just in another vein.
Of course, that was before I knew they were involved with GreenPeace.
sardu| 11.2.09 @ 11:07AM
Sting has the dubious distinction of being a bigger megalomaniac egotist blowhard than even Dabama himself. Life on this planet would best be improved for all if he would concentrate solely on his 9 hour tantric orgasms and never open his mouth to speak or sing again. Bono's heart, one gets the impression, is in the right place, and of course that and five bucks will get you a Mocha at Starbuck's. He probably has a modicum of common sense that could be accessed if some right thinking folk could get him in a dark room for 3 or 4 days and challenge his basic assumptions and ideas. But that's never going to happen. The rose colored sunglasses he wears all the time are ironically appropriate.
Jim Hlavac| 11.2.09 @ 11:20AM
Bono moved his multi-million dollar fortune to an off-shore tax free Dutch run bank haven. Then he tried to build a skyscraper in Dublin that would have dwarfed anything in the country, and was filled with million dollar apartments for sale. One of his band mates is trying to build a mutli-million dollar multi-house compound on "environmentally" sensitive land (I thought all land was environmentally sensitive, but I'm told no by lefties,) in California which has pickled some of the locals.
So while urging higher taxes on all he avoids his own. While preaching cultural sensitivity he wants to debase the historic core of a city. And his buddy wants to debase some scenic part of California (and not Ireland, mind you, where they are from.)
Yep, par for the course -- and the song is, I do believe: "your lying eyes."
victor| 11.5.09 @ 9:25PM
Here ya go!
Da Edge of Blight!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....aster.html
David J| 11.2.09 @ 11:35AM
I still love good music, even if the musicians who write/sing the stuff believe in different politics than I do. After all, they are musicians - NOT politicians!
Mean Sign Holder| 11.2.09 @ 12:16PM
I am SO sure that Boner's multi-million dollar co-op overlooking Central Park is lit with CFL's. I bet not even the broom closet (which he probably never sees) is lit with a cfl.
Adam Smith| 11.2.09 @ 12:18PM
It's sad, I used to love The Police and U2 and can now hardly listen to them anymore without cringing.
U2 long ago ceased being a band and morphed into some kind of weird Leftist-Celebrity-Reality Show with global ambitions.
The Police were broken up by Sting's ego & narcissim and for that I can not forgive the guy. Then again, they would most likely have gone down the same road as U2 given the similarities between the two lead singers.
It should surprise no one the being now known as "Sting" is a former member of the teachers union.
Just sayin...
victor| 11.5.09 @ 9:30PM
Having seen U2 three times on their Achtung Baby tour and still have the tee shirt, I was disappointed by their following releases. Too much Techno and Industrial and not enough "music"
I still have some CD's left and what I have sold on Amazon, I have put on my laptop or MAC.
Sad too say, I lost Unforgettable somewhere along the way.
Alan Brooks| 11.2.09 @ 1:36PM
As 1776 was the great year for politics, 1966 was the great year for pop music.
But that's not saying much; pop's melodies are very limited.
hush this cry of progress 'til a thousand years have past.
Alan Brooks| 11.2.09 @ 6:53PM
BTW,
Nugent's 'Journey To The Center Of The Mind' was a better song than anything Bono or Sting ever wrote.
Nick| 11.3.09 @ 12:32AM
Mr. Brooks,
Someone of your maturity was into the Amboy Dukes?
How cool is that?
victor| 11.5.09 @ 9:35PM
Nothing can beat the first four of Joshua Tree, but if you insist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN2VNFpiGWo
Check out those cuffs!
jack| 11.2.09 @ 1:52PM
why is anyone listening to this sack of crap? this is just what we need, some foul smelling unbathed overage overated rocker from a third world country telling us to who to vote for and where our tax dollars should go. Someone save us from these pop stars. Not only do we have to suffer the morons from Hollywood but now from Ireland or Scotland or where ever this guy is from. Leave us alone
JP| 11.2.09 @ 3:44PM
A few years back, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen were asked why they weren't so politically involved as Bono. The Edge responded that they were just entertainers and politics was Bono's thing.
I think Bono realized about a decade ago that people who attend his concerts didn't go there to be lectured by a multimillionare "artiste". During thier last tour, Bono did thank his fans for forking out thier hard earn money for his financial benefit. While he still preaches about Africe or world hunger, I think he has toned down his stridency. Personally, I can't see spending a few hundre dollars to see anyone.
JimE| 11.2.09 @ 5:30PM
Excellent entertainment, Obama,Sting and Bono. THE THREE STOOGES.
Tassie| 11.2.09 @ 6:21PM
So called celebreties should first lead a moral life and after that give lessons to others.
They make me sick.
weight| 11.12.09 @ 2:06PM
hi