Posted on 03/24/2002 4:49:04 AM PST by Happygal
OPEN your eyes and weep tears of gratitude. Judging by last week's very public schmoozing between the guys, Bono is now the de facto President of the good ole USA so all hail the chief and rush out and buy his latest musical confection. And his Jubilee 2000 T-shirt.
And what a Mephistophelian genius the man is.
Dubya may have conquered the booze and be about to conquer the axis of evil or destroy anywhere harbouring a Saddamite or a Bin Ladenite but only Bono has succeeded in making the breathless transition from young leftie rebel well, Young Fine Gaeler of sorts who used make angry phone calls to the White House from his Zoo TV stage in the 1990s in order to excoriate the Yanks into intimate buddy of former gay-basher Republican gerontocrat Jesse Helms and a closer adviser to George Dubya than George Senior, God and Condoleeza Rice combined.
In fact, Bono has suddenly got such an inside track into George's heart and soul and mind and pocket that the world's most powerful leader forgot all about the axis of evil, children's reading programmes and European steel and just took out an aid cheque for $5 billion dollars and said, "Go on, Bono, give it to whosoever you wish is that enough to go on?"
And in that transcendental moment the two became one, the streets had no name and a Joshua Tree grew right there in front of the White House, almost blocking the view.
So how did he do it?
Surely it wasn't just by quoting the scripture of U2's back catalogue or by singing Sunday Bloody Sunday or by subjecting Dubya to a lesson on Sabbath Economics (don't even begin to ask).
No, here is how it came to pass that the most isolationist president since, ehh, the last one suddenly whipped out that whopper of a cheque. It is hard to exaggerate or misunderestimate how jollied-up Dubya was by (a) the fact that Bono didn't whip off his wraparounds and offer them to him as he did to the poor Pope, (b) the joyful realisation that Bono didn't have a sound crew so probably wouldn't sing, and (c) the super-duper news of the imminent resignation of Robbo, the one who had a more "irritating" and "awkward" voice than even Bono.
And so in a moment of supreme joy He that Rules and Bombs the World transferred his thoughts from Anaconda to Bono and bestowed his largesse on the White House's favourite self-styled pest the eminent rock activist and said that "if there's anything over you can give it to Louis to help Six with their UK launch for as John Milton Friedman-Keynes once said to me there's no such thing as a free launch."
The man's a genius, and Bono is just wicked.
Bah humbug! Ship this journo to The Times where this kind of "cute" Yank-bashing is popular.
Because you are so trustworthy, I withdraw my comment.
That said, if it's a Jubilee he wants, why do I have to pay for it? Why doesn't AIB (via it's big US subsidiary), Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc just go ahead and forgive the loans to third world despots who misspent what they got? This money given to Bono is going straight to American banks with a little commission for the dictators. My tax dollars are going to the shareholders of these financial institutions! Then, the banks will just go ahead and make new loans to the same people.
My wife had to translate 75% of the movie "The Commitments" for me too.
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