When Rock Stars Become Political Pundits
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published March 27, 2007, 4:17 pm in Ethics, Morality, & Justice, Rhetoric.
No, I'm not talking about myself here. Although I sometimes like to consider myself a pundit, I can't really take credit for being a rock star. I tell myself that I came close to it at one point, but then wife, kids, and school got in the way. Ah, the glory days of local rock stardom...
But enough about me; let's talk about Bono, the only living rock star who has managed to make himself not only culturally relevant but politically relevant. I love it that their first album came out in 1980 and yet they're still going strong, producing music now that is as important as that from 1981 (Boy) or 1987 (The Joshua Tree, which, by the way, is generally considered one of the best or most important albums of the entire 1980s). I used to thank that Bono's insertion of himself into the political arena was a silly move, that he should stay where he was good, where he wouldn't make a fool of himself. But then he didn't make a fool of himself. I'm not sure about the viability of the "year of jubilee," his idea from the year 2000 where the World Bank and other countries should cancel the debts owed by developing nations, but it's a great idea. Maybe not that practical, but how interesting that an idea from the Old Testament could take political stage yet again.
Now Bono comes in the "essay" section of Time Magazine, and I'm glad to see him there. There are problems with his essay, but it's still quite engaging. He reads the Treaty of Rome from 1957 that defined the new Europe after WWII, and he says that it was a "very human miracle. The people of Europe found that their capacity for destruction was mirrored by an equally immense capacity for forgiveness, grace, and hope. Looking to the U.S., Europeans could see how cherry-picked European ideas from minds like Locke, Rousseau and Tom Paine could flourish in a society not polluted by blood and aristocracy. And so, in 1957, six nations signed the Treaty of Rome and, with that one crucial act, built a showcase of multilateralism, prosperity and international solidarity." Then he goes on to say that "Europe is a thought that has to become a feeling--one based on the belief that Europe stands only if injustice falls and that we find our feet only when our neighbors stand with us in freedom and equality. Our humanity is diminished when we have no mission bigger than ourselves. And one way to define who we are might be to spend more time looking across the eight miles of Mediterranean Sea that separates Europe from Africa." And from there, he defines what Europe should do--it should commit to helping Africa with its political, poverty, and medical problems by committing huge amounts of funding to the continent.
First, let me say that I agree with him about this. I have written before about the AIDS crisis in Africa, and I plan on writing more about the political problems in Uganda and Darfur. But that isn't what interests me about Bono's essay. There are two important things here, one that Bono brings up and one that he doesn't.
First, I like the way he describes history. Bono is not the most concrete writer, as any listener to the album Zooropa knows, and this essay suffers from the same leaps as his poetic ruminations. The way he attempts to lead us from 1957 to helping others to the neighbor eight miles away is just one example of how he's stretching it. I'm not saying it works, though, because I still like it. And I love the way he leads from the Treaty of Rome into this. It's not a concrete transition, but so few transitions are or should be concrete that I'm willing to forgive it here, especially in a rock star's writing, even a brilliant rock star like Bono.
What I really love about Bono's use of the Treaty of Rome gets at the second point I find compelling. He says that there are moments of poetry there, although not many. He says that the signatories are asked "to foster 'the sustainable economic and social development of the developing countries and more particularly the most disadvantaged among them' and calls for a 'campaign against poverty in the developing countries.'" That gets at what Europe should do for Africa, and Bono makes a point to say that the U.S. is included there, too, that the U.S. should not forget what it did for Europe after WWII, and it should make the same commitment to helping Africa, that the idea of neighbor is not one next door, but one that lives in the world.
And that is a personal statement, not just a political statement. It is a statement about all of us, not just countries. I like the way Bono is writing about global politics, but that his ideas are even more pertinent on a personal level. He brings up the idea of "meitheal. It means that the people of the villange help one another out most when the work is the hardest." I don't know about nations, for I doubt they will ever exist with that kind of neighborly humanity, but I love the idea on a personal or "village" level, as Bono calls it. I love it that I can take this idea of "neighbor" and apply it to my street, my community, my city, my country, and my world. That is what I want, and I wish I could live up to it. I wish I would spend my days helping others, but there are always pressing circumstances. There are always pressing things that will force us to commit nothing to simply helping others. But I will continually try, and I hope others do the same.
There are things we can do personally, after all. Giving to public radio or PBS is just the start of community or world involvement. It is only the beginning of what we can do. And I'm not talking about just giving money to some Sally Struthers feed the children organization. I'm talking about talking to others about the horrors in the Sudan, about giving money to reputable organizations that work to help in these areas. I'm talking about volunteering in the local teen project.
Those things make the difference, and I would argue that they make more of a difference than 1% of some country's GDP.
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