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Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:59 am (PST) Belfast Telegraph
June 15, 2007
I'm nearly done complaining about Bono and Bob Geldof lecturing governments on how much money their taxpayers should give to the 'Third World'. Not quite, but nearly. For we all know that U2 moved their tax base offshore to safe, tax-free Netherlands about three seconds after Brian Cowen changed the rules for artists' exemption, thus sparing the band certain new Irish taxes.
And actually, I see no reason why they shouldn't avoid tax. It's a commercial decision, it's perfectly legal, they're businessmen and that's that. But at this point they really are disqualified from making any commentary whatsoever about what any government anywhere should do with their tax take from their tax-paying citizens.
And to be fair to the rest of U2, they say nothing about the wrongs of the world. They play their music and live their lives and don't preach at us, which is just fine. Bono, however, is different. He hasn't stopped prating, lecturing, hectoring and preening about the plight of the 'Third World', despite his tax avoidance schemes.
In a way, that too is fine. He is what he is. And as for Bob Geldof, he is one of the most successful businessmen in Britain, worth many millions of pounds. If he feels so strongly about people making contributions to the Third World, he could publicly covenant a portion of his huge annual income in that direction.
However, he too is what he is, and that is also that. But what I find truly objectionable is not so much their conduct as the fact that so many media types are willing to take these two fine fellows at their own assessment of themselves. Why is Bono ceaselessly feted by
journalists for his concern about the poor of the world? It is almost laughable, but it is not because it shows the level of abject cowardice and moral timidity which infuse so much of the modern media.
Several years ago, after writing on the issue of Bono not paying-and-displaying yet still lecturing the Government on how it should spend its tax-take on the poor of the world, I was invited on to an RTE current affairs programme in which he was appearing. The role
proposed by RTE for me was that I should put some hard questions to Bono about this apparent criticism.
I enquired why the RTE presenter couldn't ask those very questions him/herself. The reply was that they wouldn't feel comfortable confronting Bono on the subject: so would I do it instead? I confess, I chickened out at being the tough cop in RTE's proposed Mutt and Jeff Act, not least because I didn't see any reason why I should do an RTE
broadcaster's job. And you know, I was right: for the broadcast interview was a disgraceful exhibition of supine deference, and anyone who had tried to break up that particular love-in would probably have been lynched later in the media.
The fawning disease is no less virulent in Britain, where even the Daily Telegraph was moved last week to transports of witless, gibbering adulation over Bono and Geldof's 'principles'. Even worse was BBC Two's Kirsty Wark, a 'successful' television presenter, who was reduced to the condition of a giggling schoolgirl in Bono's presence.
It almost makes one hunger for the good old days of British anti-Irishness, where at least a hint of muscular bigotry might have kept the rampant, inane Bonophilia in check. But anti- Irish feelings in Britain these days are as rare as Swiss suicide bombers in the Vatican.
Instead, media commentators there actually applauded the Irish rock stars for their obscene and adolescent abuse of the G8 leaders. Yet remember - the latter's combined annual incomes are probably a fraction of what Geldof and Bono individually earn.
So the real issue here is not the hypocrisy of a couple of rock stars, but the failure of the media to confront them. And this, alas, is symptomatic of our trade today. Too many journalists have become the ingratiating court- iers of chic, right-on celebrity, while we turn other celebrities into objects of ridicule.
Thus, it is safe these days to sneer at the Pope, but we speak in hushed tones of awe about 'liberal' stars like George Clooney, Robert Redford and even the traitor Jane Fonda. And in that galaxy of voguish, showbiz piety, Bono and Geldof are at the zenith, their stellar sanctimony utterly immune to challenge from a largely spineless caste of reverential hacks.
A word of advice to parents: don't let your daughter join the Press, Mrs Worthington, and don't put your son on TV.
© Independent News & Media (NI), 2007.