It's All About Me, Man

I've finally achieved consistency in my life. Any person of average or above intelligence can predict what I will say next with unerring accuracy. And what I say will always be wrong.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [Bizarro_UltraZine] Bono & Bush ...

That Bono's keeping some strange company these days. He was very tight with Jesse Helms, who's image benefited from the association (remember that picture of Elvis and Nixon?) but what did the poor Bono says he speaks for get out of it?  A big fat goose egg, not even one you can eat.

It's telling that Bush wants to meet with him. You can tell the really effective people, because Bush refuses to talk to them.  Cindy Sheehan, for example.

But I can't say it half as well as my old buddy Dave Marsh:
 
Bad Company
Dave Marsh

"Nothing is more important than passion," Jon Bon Jovi said on June 17 at Oxford University. "Whatever you decide to do in life, just be passionate about it." Did no one think to whisper the words "Timothy McVeigh" in his ear?

Still, that wasn't the dumbest thing a rock star did on a college campus this month. U2's Bono lapped the field during his June 7 appearance at Harvard, where he cozied up to economist Jeffrey Sachs, beaming in the front row. Bono's passion is Third World debt relief. Sachs is an expert on it. As CounterPunch reported, "the Harvard prof...helped devise the 'shock therapy' scheme that pillaged the Russian economy, left millions in poverty, and made billionaires out of a few insiders who were primed to capitalize on the privatization of federal assets.... His approach toward debt issues is the same old Faustian bargain - debt will be forgiven if those nations agree to privatize their natural resources: water, natural gas, timber, minerals."

Bono's passion knows no limits. Sachs is not quite the bottom of the barrel. Bono has even cozied up to the veteran race-baiter Jesse Helms, who actually doddered into a U2 show a few days before the Harvard debacle.

Helms has an interesting history in mingling music and politics. In 1993, he and the vastly overrated "songwriter" Senator Orrin Hatch were in an elevator with Carol Mosely-Braun, the only black woman ever to serve in the U. S. Senate. "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry," Helms said. "I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." He sang the racist lyrics about the good old days of slavery until the elevator stopped.

Mosely-Braun had the good sense to walk away from Helms and his cronies. Sadly, at its D.C. show, U2 gave shout-outs to Helms, several other Senators and Scott Hatch, former executive director of the national Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Senators from both parties gladly cooperated with Hatch in setting up meetings with Bono. Hatch let it be known he worked for free, as if bringing a major media star around wasn't its own reward. ("You've never seen star-fucking 'til you've been to Capitol Hill," as a friend of mine who worked for the RIAA put it when he left.)

One thing Bono will NOT get out of this is American cooperation with debt forgiveness. This Senate certainly isn't going to get rid of the law it just passed that forbids indebted Americans from getting credit card debt relief by declaring bankruptcy. The Democrats who now control the Senate have neither issue on their agenda. Do we need to guess where Helms, the most aggressive reactionary in the Senate, stands on these matters?

If you believe that meeting with the powerful is the only route to justice - as Bono has shown he does in his dealings with the UK and Irish governments on Ulster peace - this is where your passion puts you. But huddling and cuddling with the people who create the problem isn't the only way to fight for what's right. Jackson Browne and Steve Earle also haven't ended poverty by aligning themselves with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. But at least they get their picture of what debt relief means from the poor themselves. And they don't have to put up with a batch of phony political cronies and economic snake oil hustlers crowding the hallways backstage. That's a start.

I hope Bono has a steel-plated back. If he stays in this company, he'll inevitably need it.



 
On 10/19/05, kdhaisch@aol.com <kdhaisch@aol.com> wrote:
Tim reported, in part...
> WASHINGTON - In town for a concert, U2 rock star Bono was
> invited to lunch Wednesday with the president.
> ... Bono also planned to meet with National Security Adviser
> Stephen Hadley later in the day, before U2's concert at the
> MCI Center.  The spokesman laughingly told reporters that Bush
> was not planning to attend the concert.
 
 
I didn't know Bono had a concert career after his breakup
with CHER.
 
Hey, isn't Sonny Bono dead???
 
kdh
 
 
 
 
.


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