British wag Brendan O’Neil at Spiked went hard after Bono last week. It was a case of a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun. The subject was Bono’s stumping for aid to Africa with the big-time government leaders at the G8 summit. Bono, according to O’Neil, is a not-cool wrinkled rocker on a messianic mission and a neo-colonial self-appointed savior of Africans who’s actually doing Africans more harm than good. In the end O’Neil endorses the ideology espoused by London neo-punk band Bono must die! “Yes, that would be a good start.”
Firing into the barrel like that, O’Neil manages to hit on some key points, things I at least am thinking about vaguely every time I see Bono’s grizzled bespectacled mug smiling at an African kid or shaking the hand of an African leader or fighting the good fight among narcissistic Baby Boomer western leaders. For egg-sample:
“Bono’s rise shows the role that Africa plays for many people today. For politicians and celebrities alike, Africa has become a stage for moralistic posturing. Campaigning on African poverty is something that ‘gives me a sense of purpose, something to work for’, writes a contributor to the issue of Vanity Fair on Africa that Bono guest edited. Or as Paul Theroux bitingly argues: ‘Because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth.’ Indeed, we could just as easily ask what earthly right the G8 itself has to discuss and determine what should happen in Africa’s poorest countries. Like Bono, no G8 leader has ever been elected by the nations of Africa…. Bono is only the most successful of many ‘Mr Africas’ around today.”
“Bono’s rise has also been facilitated by the unholy marriage of politics and celebrity. No political campaign seems complete these days without a celebrity fronting it or even forcing it through…. Bono did not smash down the gates of the G8 to gain entry. Rather, he was effectively invited in by G8 leaders who hoped that the celebrity crusader would add a touch of grit and glamour to their shallow and self-serving debates on Africa. Even Bono’s haranguing of the world leaders had its benefits, since it allowed the G8 to present itself as being nail-bitingly responsive to African demands (as represented by Bono of course) and it may have won them a new, potentially younger audience in the shape of celebrity-watchers and the MTV crowd. When even discussions of ‘ending poverty’ require a celebrity to front them, you know that celebrities truly do rule the Earth.”
“Bono is a celebrity colonialist. His patronising campaign to single-handedly ‘save Africa’ is actually damaging the continent. It is painting Africa as a pathetic place whose wide-eyed, infantile populations need a loudmouth rock star to fight in their corner. His disregard for anything resembling an electoral process (‘I represent a lot of people in Africa’) lends weight to the prejudice that African leaders are peculiarly corrupt, and thus it is best to leapfrog straight over them – – as does his demand for ‘anti-corruption measures’ to be attached to all forms of aid to Africa.”
That’s all good stuff. Yet O’Neil gets caught up in his own faith in the power of the electoral mandate. He keeps asking in effect: “What is Bono doing there among elected officials who the voters of the world have asked to represent their interests.” Fact is, the world’s elected officials — in the U.S., in Britain, in Africa, everywhere — are now and have been for centuries worse than woefully ineffective when it comes to doing any good in the world. They haven’t only failed to alleviate unnecessary suffering in Africa and most of the other countries on the planet; they have been the main ones driving the plunder and neglect at the root of human misery time and again. Bono’s agenda may be messianic, his persona comic. But I say let him and Angelina and Bob Geldoff and the rest of the pop-culure court jesters put a fire to the politicians. It can’t hurt.
Tags: africa, bono, brendan oneil, g8