Posted on 10/20/2005 5:28:58 AM PDT by brwnsuga
Before getting on stage before his fans in a Wednesday night concert, U2 frontman Bono bent President Bush's ear about the world's poor.
The rock star and the president had lunch in the private dining room off the Oval Office, ordering from the menu at the same mess hall where White House staffers get their lunch. Bush, dressed in the classic presidential uniform of suit and red tie, also showed Bono, dressed in his trademark black jeans and sunglasses, around the Oval Office.
Bono told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview before they dined that he had no fear of meeting Bush or any other world leader.
"They should be afraid, because they will be held accountable for what happened on their watch," Bono told the magazine for an article on newsstands Friday. "I'm representing the poorest and the most vulnerable people. On a spiritual level, I have that with me. I'm throwing a punch, and the fist belongs to people who can't be in the room, whose rage, whose anger, whose hurt I represent.
"The moral force is way beyond mine, it's an argument that has much more weight than I have. So I'm not feeling nervous."
Over an hour and 40 minute meeting, Bono and Bush discussed debt relief, AIDS, malaria and world trade, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. McClellan said they also talked about the concerts that U2 was preparing to put on at Washington's MCI Center Wednesday and Thursday night.
In the Rolling Stone interview, Bono heaped praise on Bush for providing $15 billion to help fight AIDS in Africa, money that is helping pay for anti-retroviral drugs. He said he was disappointed that Bush and Congress had cut the Millennium Challenge program that gives foreign aid to countries that pursue political, economic and human rights reforms, but he'll keep pushing them to fund the full amount that the president promised.
Bono said he is "capable of having a row" if he doesn't get what he wants. He said he once criticized Bush for not getting the Millennium Challenge money out quick enough and was rebuked for it.
"One senator threw a newspaper at me in a meeting. 'How dare you disrespect the president of the United States!'" Bono told the magazine.
Bono said he doesn't support any president from the left or the right, but he has a hard time criticizing Bush after he has sent the money to Africa. He said he's made it clear that he doesn't support the war in Iraq, but he doesn't campaign against it because his main priority is helping the poor and disadvantaged.
"I work for them," Bono said. "If me not shooting my mouth off about the war in Iraq is the price I pay, then I'm prepared to pay it."
But, he added, "I'm a big-mouthed Irish rock star. Of course it frustrates me."
Bono: Poor people are pretty poor.
Bush: They are that.
(three minutes pass)
Bono: Poor, that's what poor people are.
Bush: Poor, poor, poor.
(a minute passes)
Bono: You won't find a lot of spare change among the poor.
Bush: Nope.
(seven minutes pass)
Bono: If I had a choice, I wouldn't be poor.
Bush: Neither would they.
(four minute passes)
Bono: Isn't being poor a real tragedy?
Bush: (looking at his watch) Oh my! How the time has flown! I have to meet the Supremo Leader and Chief Big Pickle of Zimbabwe. I understand his name is Lazamataz.
Lol. I would ask the same of Oprah Winfrey.
There was a list of the U.S. states and their charitable donations.
The most charitable states were in the deep south, Alabama, Mississippi, the poorest states.
The northeast states, Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example, were the least charitable.
Some wealthy are so because they give only when it doesn't hurt.
Who the hell cares what this goofy POS thinks about anything?
Damn! Just shut the hell up and sing a song!
Or don't sing a song. Who give as rat's...., aww, the hell with it.
As long as weak-minded, socialist- leaning, "hero" worshippers with birkenstocks and foul body odor support this fool, he'll continue to assume that whatever he has to say is significant on the world stage.
President Bush should tell him to take a hike.
But then, President Bush should have done a lot of things of late, that he hasn't done.
Kowtowing to ignorant buffoons that sing bad songs is one thing he has no business doing.
Send this ass to a minion of some sort, such as the local Postmaster of Podunk, Iowa, who will give him (Bono), all the attention he deserves.
Lol. I don't even know who he is. I read "Bono" and thought of ole dead Sonny Bono.
I've never heard a U2 song. At least, not that I'm aware of. I read U2 and think of ole Gary Powers.
Am I out of it or what? :o)
Is Big Pickle the name of the chief or is Lazamataz the name of his Big Pickle?
I'm easily confused here.
This is going to cost the American taxpayer BIGTIME.
Ditto. There was an old saying taught in business school, "The closer you are to familiarity the further you are from respect."
Be careful with your critiques of Bono. His policy goals--succoring the poor through policy rather than through individual charity which affords the give the opportunity to imitate Our Father in Heaven who makes the rain fall on the just and unjust alike--are leftist, but he is hardly a socialist. He very much supports African development projects which institute small-scale capitalism (the only thing other than Christian charity that's ever worked to succor the poor, at least without introducing odd new social pathologies).
He happens to have used the leisure of rockstardom to become one of the leading authorities in or out of government on African development issues. (And no, his ideas aren't all leftist.) As a result he's probably the only rockstar worth inviting to the White House, that's how.
Oh puh-leeze!
Nope! No messianic 'Ego' here.
Do the world's poor include those who've paid for a full price ticket to a U2 concert?
Why isn't Bono, with all his money, going out and helping the world's poor himself? I think he would get a lot more done that way rather than hobnobbing with world leaders.
Any pictures of this meeting?
A matter of perspective, I suppose. "Leftist" and "socialist" are the same thing, to me.
Now, veronica. It doesn't appear that you're reaching out. It'll work. I just know it. :)
LOL - wonderful!
“I'm throwing a punch, and the fist belongs to people who can't be in the room, whose rage, whose anger, whose hurt I represent.”
His punch will also land on people not in the room, the American taxpayer, whose rage, whose anger, whose hurt will be ... ignored.
Maybe we could put Bono and Mary Landriu in the ring and let them throw punches at each other. Put it on pay-per-view and use the proceeds to buy a Mercedes for an African kleptocrat.
If the President did want to meet with Bono he would not. There is obviously something that Bono says about his cause that has touched a nerve with "W" and on this plain they are of like minds. Time will show if it has been waste of time, or time well spent. :)
If the President did want to meet with Bono he would not. There is obviously something that Bono says about his cause that has touched a nerve with "W" and on this plain they are of like minds. Time will show if it has been waste of time, or time well spent. :)
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