to resist the invitation to substitute the word ‘America’ with the word ‘me’.
The idea that Bono makes it worse is, one might reasonably object, simply a political opinion – one based on what I think is clear-sighted, well informed analysis, but an opinion nonetheless. Other writers have looked at the same career, the same facts, and drawn opposite conclusions. Readers are invited to judge for themselves. However, the depoliticising language of humanitarianism, the image of Bono as outside, above and beyond politics, has often rendered the expression of mere political difference about him difficult to express. So whether or not you ultimately agree that Bono ‘makes it worse’, the point of this book is to place him and, by extension, celebrity humanitarianism firmly in the realm of politics, and therefore of political difference. To do that means to underline a few indisputable facts: that he stands for a particular set of discourses, values and material forces within a wider debate about global poverty, development and justice; that though these discourses, values and forces are often vaguely and misleadingly expressed, these can broadly be characterised as conservative, Western-centric and pro-capitalist; that they are seen as fundamentally non-threatening by the elites that have wreaked havoc on the world; and that they are capable of being vigorously contested and criticised both in principle and in terms of their effectiveness. In other words, after reading this book, you might well still believe that Bono is right, but perhaps no longer believe that his rightness is self-evident, beyond argument.
Whether or not Bono is right, I hope it will be difficult for anyone who has read this book to maintain that he is ‘left’. Indeed, since 2005 he and his organisations have been frequently derisive of approaches that they see as leftish. ‘It … would be really wrong beating a sort of left-wing drum, taking the usual bleeding-heart-liberal line’ is a typical Bono statement about where he locates his campaigning politics.8 Of course he would also say, in the unlikely event that he were asked, that he is not right-wing either. It is precisely the notion that the technocratic ‘problem-solving’ approaches that he advocates are somehow apolitical that needs to be contested.
The rise of Bono as a political operator since the late 1990s is tied to larger and disquieting developments in transnational governance, by which the biggest states, corporations, foundations and multilateral institutions have undermined democratic accountability and sovereignty throughout the world, often in the name of humanitarianism. Bono is a relatively small (though nonetheless significant) player in this project, and to consider it fully is beyond the bounds of this volume. By the end of the book, as Bono’s close ties to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its agenda for African development are considered, readers may be encouraged to learn more.
Before you get to that point, The Frontman is divided into three thematic strands that are drawn in part from the chronology and geography of Bono’s own story. Chapter 1, ‘Ireland’, looks, among other things, at the myths and realities of Bono’s origins in Dublin; the way he and U2 related to the Irish Troubles; their emergence as symbols of Irish confidence and regeneration, and then as major players in domestic business and property investment, before and after the collapse of the Irish economy. Chapter 2, ‘Africa’, examines how Africa has been constructed in Bono’s work and how he came to steal the show at Live Aid in 1985, eventually overtaking its progenitor Bob Geldof as the main ‘African’ advocate in Western politics and show business, pushing neoliberal solutions to the continent’s problems. Chapter 3, ‘The World’, looks at Bono’s multinational business interests and his role in events such as G8 summits, cosying up to the likes of Jesse Helms and Paul O’Neill, whitewashing war criminals of the Iraq invasion such as Tony Blair and Paul Wolfowitz, and acting as a sidekick to shock-doctrine economist Jeffrey Sachs. Some important but non-political aspects of his career are absent entirely; some of the most important political events and issues are dealt with in two or even three of the chapters, examined each time from a slightly different perspective.
The great genius and the great danger of Bono is that – not unlike that ‘community organiser’ Barack Obama – he does a plausible imitation of an activist. His discourse rings with familiar cries for justice, and some of us who should know better hear our yearnings in his voice: he is, after all, an accomplished singer. British journalist George Monbiot wrote after the 2005 G8 summit, in which Bono played such a clever and shameful role:
The G8 leaders and the business interests their summit promotes can absorb our demands for aid, debt relief, even slightly fairer terms of trade, and lose nothing. They can wear our colours, speak our language, claim to support our aims, and discover in our agitation not new constraints, but new opportunities for manufacturing consent. Justice, this consensus says, can be achieved without confronting power.9
Bono comes in the name of that power, assuring us that if we make our peace with it – ‘campaigning’, sure, but only within its terms – it will make everything all right. That power, true to its pretensions as an equal-opportunity employer, is happy to employ a talkative Irish rock star in designer sunglasses and leather trousers to deliver the message, if that’s what it takes.
It’s nothing personal, Bono, but I’m afraid one of the first steps for people seeking real justice is that we stop buying the message you’re selling.
‘WHAT A THRILL FOR FOUR IRISH BOYS FROM THE NORTHSIDE OF DUBLIN …’: ORIGINS
Bono is rich: he wears designer clothes, flies around in private jets, drives any one of five luxury cars, loves the finest of food and wine – his net worth has been estimated at more than a half-billion dollars.
Bono is famous: he fronts the most consistently popular band of the last three decades, has millions of fans, sings several of our era’s best-known songs – he wears sunglasses that draw attention to him rather than deflect it.
Bono is powerful: his counsel is sought, heard and heeded at the very highest levels of national and international governance – he is, as the Ramones might say, friends with the president, friends with the pope.
But Bono wants you to know he hasn’t forgotten where he comes from. As thousands gathered on Washington’s Mall in January 2009, and millions watched on TV, he told the man who would be inaugurated as US president two days later: ‘What a thrill for four Irish boys from the northside of Dublin to honour you, sir.’
When Bono, preening for Barack Obama and the wider world outside the Lincoln Memorial, chose these words of pseudo-self-deprecation to capture the all-round awesomeness of U2’s presence, he was indulging in a mashup of signifiers, typical of those who carefully craft their own images. At its most basic level, the ‘What a thrill for …’ was just an adaptation of American Dream boilerplate, which was flowing especially thick in those Obama-worshipping days: ‘We were just four Irish boys’, was what he meant, ‘and now look at us.’ ‘Irish’, though, doesn’t necessarily signify a foreign nationality for many people in the US, so much as a certain kind of Americans, or even just a bout of bad temper. However, Bono did throw in a few extra words of geographic specificity – ‘from the northside of Dublin’ – and in context one got the impression it was the realm of the working class, the baddest part of town. And it probably doesn’t hurt that ‘north’ and ‘Irish’ may also conjure up memories of old TV news footage of bombs and barbed wire. Suddenly, Bono, Adam, Larry and The Edge are cast in the mind’s eye as street urchins who dodged the crossfire of the Irish Troubles and lived to sing about it. Hey, didn’t they call two of their first three albums Boy and War?
This discussion of origin-mythmaking is not simply meant to suggest that Bono and his band are somehow inauthentic (though it is true that the concept of ‘authenticity’ and its discontents have stalked U2’s career). Nor is it meant to provoke the arguably racist
