I noticed that this article from this past week didn't get diaried, and it definitely should have. Bono's going to be joining the NY Times's op-ed page.
I'm not a particular fan of Bono's music (sorry, I know it's technically well done), and even less of a fan of his politics. Sure, he goes around talking about poverty, but he seems much more interested with letting people feel good about their wealth than actually solving the crisis.
Take his (red) brand, for instance, which was supposed to raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. It's nice, and with each item sending 10% of the profits to charity, it was a spin-off of those yogurt companies that give several cents a yogurt to fight breast cancer.
But, as AdAgereported last year, it didn't even come close to making up for advertising costs associated with promoting the idea. Instead, we were treated to Oprah declaring that "shopping is giving," running around to stores buying up (red) iPods and cell phones to promote the brand.
Then there's his status as a tax exile....
From all we're hearing from Republicans right now about Ireland having such low taxes that anyone with money is running there to set up shop, apparently Bono didn't get the message. He moved his residence from Ireland to avoid taxation. British accountant Richard Murphy explains:
This makes Bono’s shift of his tax affairs from Ireland to the Netherlands all the more difficult to understand. As I’ve said before on this site, and will say again, Ireland is a tax haven. And amongst the absurd benefits it has offered is tax free status to artists. U2 have apparently exploited this to ensure that no tax has been paid on the royalties they have earned from their songs.
Now, in a slightly more enlightened moment Ireland has decided to cap the income which can be subject to this exemption at 250,000 euros per annum. This is, of course, income beyond the dreams of about 99% of artists, whatever their medium, and so hardly diminishes Ireland’s commitment to support the arts, if that was the intent of the exemption. But the change is apparently unacceptable to U2.
Let’s put this in context. At worst the change means that if their excess royalties were shifted into an Irish company they might be subject to 12.5% corporation tax. This is, because Ireland is a tax haven, one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world. Except that the Netherlands, which as I’ve also noted before will get increasing attention from this site, offers an even better deal on royalties and hopes to improve still further upon it from January 2007.
Now, that would simply be annoying from anyone else. But Bono has built up his charitable cred by telling world leaders to commit more money to Africa.
In fact, he even had his fans boo the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) because he didn't commit enough money in 2005:
The band's Vertigo Tour has already courted political controversy in the build-up to the massive Live8 event at the weekend.
At the second of U2's three sell-out Dublin concerts on Saturday, the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was booed as lead singer Bono urged him in front of 80,000 fans in a packed Croke Park stadium to meet the UN target.
I don't know where he thinks that money comes from if it doesn't come from taxes.
Then there's his palling around with Jesse Helms. Besides being generally one of the douchiest conservative douche bags out there, Helms famously fought against efforts to fund HIV/AIDS treatment, research, and prevention. He spoke out against the Ryan White Act by saying that people who got sick from AIDS acquired the disease through "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."
Bono did get Helms to turn his position around on global AIDS by pointing out that some children were born with it. Bono wined and dined with him and called him a "good friend," like his other buddy George W. Bush.
For me, as someone who's seen the toll the virus has taken on the community that Helms couldn't be bothered with because of our "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct," a community that was left to die by the hundreds of thousands because haters like Helms refused to see us as human, a person can't make up for those deaths by realizing that there are some "good" victims of that disease. And Bono, who's absolutely free to lobby Helms, should at least have the decency not to let him off the hook so easily.
But that's what Bono's anti-poverty tactics are about, really: letting people off the hook.
As the co-owner of right-leaning Forbes magazine, he already has a platform from which to speak. I can't particularly think of anything important that he could add that couldn't be said in the form of a real article when something newsworthy happens.
I know that much of this comes down to our culture's infatuation with stars, and I know that the Times is looking to spice up its op-ed page, but there are surely more deserving people out there.
And I'm also sure that quality writing would help them out more than star-power. Or at least I like to hope that that's the world we live in.
But when it comes to conservative opinion writers, the same guy who brought Bill Kristol to the Times had this to say:
Given that the Times' opinion pages could be the most competitive 800 words in journalism, any other pointers on how to make sure a fledgling contributor's submission will get printed? "Take a position in support of any Republican you care to name," the editor joshed. But it's a fine line, he noted with a smile: "The problem with conservative columnists," said Rosenthal, "is that many of them lie in print."