These days everyone who is anyone must have a
fashionable cause. You simply cannot be a
successful entertainer or athlete without one. It is not enough to
bring joy to someone’s life for an hour or two with your stand-up
comedy routine or your half-hour bass guitar solo. You
must be politically involved and socially concerned. (Conservative
causes count too, but they count against you.)
I say these days, but the notion that a
celebrity must have a cause goes back at least to the mid-19th
century when novelist Charles Dickens used his considerable
celebrity to rail against social injustice and inequality in
Britain. It wasn’t long before causes became
for actors, artists and those famous for being famous, an essential
accessory, not unlike those tiny handbag dogs.
U2’s Bono is perhaps the best-known example of a
contemporary celebrity with a cause. Actually he has countless
causes. There is a good chance even he does not know how many he
has. This allows Bono — Ireland’s mononymous
answer to Sting — to incessantly scold and hector the West
over how wasteful, greedy and decadent it
is. It’s not just
western governments that have to listen to Bono’s inane lecturing.
(After all, western governments truly are wasteful, greedy
and decadent.) No, the planet’s savior harangues everyday Americans
like you and I who are only trying to get by.
(For the record, the
anti-colonialist Sting wasn’t too anti-colonial to accept the title
Commander of the Order of the British Empire back in
2003.)
Bono watchers are familiar with his list of pet
causes: relocating his business empire to
Holland to avoid paying taxes, flying
hats round the world first class,
establishing a private equity fund to invest billions in a
series of money-making schemes… sorry, wrong
list. That’s Bono’s double-standards list. His pet causes include
rebuilding New Orleans, fighting AIDs in Africa, and debt relief
for slacker nations.
You may have noticed a conspicuous absence of green
causes. This could be because U2’s current 360°
Tour is the most un-eco-friendly man-made event since the
Great Fire of London in 1666.
This month Bono and his bandmates brought their
giant carbon-footprint-sized rock
extravaganza to my hometown. It reportedly took
six jumbo jets to fly in all of the stage equipment, which was
loaded onto 110 tractor-trailers and hauled to the stadium. At that
point it took roadies and an additional 120 laborers more than a
week to tear up the sod from the diamond of Busch Stadium and
construct the massive revolving
spaceship with an aluminum floor. (Yes, the empathetic Bono
had workers build an aluminum floor for concert-goers to stand on
in 100-plus degree temperatures.) Even the local alternative weekly
had to ask: “Is there anything less ‘green’ than
tearing up grass to accommodate a concert?”
Elsewhere one environmental consultant estimated the band’s
carbon footprint from the first leg of the 360° Tour
equaled the average annual waste produced by 6,500 Brits. Or,
to pick up on the intergalactic starship theme, U2 wasted enough
fuel last year to fly to Mars and back. And this is the
environmental scold who once told a Tokyo audience: “My prayer is
that we become better in looking after our
planet.”
BUT WHAT IS A LITTLE eco-hypocrisy compared to an awesome
U2 concert?
Bono, however, isn’t totally oblivious. While U2’s killer
stage show will distract most fans from the damage the band has
wreaked on the environment, rock critics are not so naive. For
these critics, Bono has fished into his pocket and purchased carbon
offsets, the champagne environmentalist’s equivalent of the
indulgences the Catholic Church used to hock. And just in case that
gesture falls short, Bono, who flies to his gigs in a private jet,
requested fans carpool to the show. And you should carpool in
a hybrid. And don’t even think of using the air conditioner. Better
yet, take the bus.
Personally, I could care less if aged rock stars
want to put on glamorous Las Vegas-style spectacles in hopes of
proving that they are still virile. There is obviously a large and
well-heeled market for such things. The truth is if Bono were to
hold his shows in Central Park, just he and The Edge sitting on
stumps playing a box guitar, I would still find him to be an
insufferable bore.
“Hypocrisy,” said Molière, “is a fashionable vice, and all
fashionable vices pass for virtue.” Luckily for celebrities, their
fans lack the ability to tell the difference between the
two.
