Revenge of the Geldof
The intersection of Live 8 and politics--a perfect combination for blogging.
The usually reliable Matt Drudge reports the following:
"Please remember, absolutely no ranting and raving about Bush or Blair and the Iraq war, this is not why you have been invited to appear," Geldof said to the manager of a top recording artist, who asked not to be identified. "We want to bring Mr. Bush in, not run him away."
Complicated. Certainly, these concerts are being held to benefit Africa. Should the performers refrain from criticizing world leaders and focus exclusively on...the music? redhurt is probably going to say yes--I'm not sure, and I can't think of a good analogy for whether or not they should speak out politically.
Thoughts?
posted by CharlesPeirce @ 7:42 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Well, Chuck, I'm going to have to go with old Geldof on this one. If the concerts' point is to get people to support helping Africa and not push any other political agenda, then they should avoid any other political talk. Nothing stratifies people like politics, and if you have some of the bands going on tirades about leaders they don't like it will inevitibly alienate some who would otherwise be supporters. In short, bringing up other political issues can only weaken the impact of the event, and therefore should be avoided. I think the appropriate attitude at an event such as this one mirrors that of U2's Bono when talking about President Bush after the announcement of the amount the US gave to help fight AIDS in Africa a few years ago (paraphrase) -- I don't care about his politics, he's giving more to fight AIDS than any other world leader and thats all that matters to me.
I'm not saying that that's all that should matter to all the people in all the bands. But just for this series of events that is the attitude they should assume.
I don't think they should focus "exclusively" on "the music", but they should indeed not use these concerts as a platform for speaking up about anything other than aid for Africa - specifically not if it's against any of the governments these concerts are trying to bring in. These musicians are performing as hired hands to try and press governments to increase aid towards Africa. They're being paid and the people watching them are doing so for free, so the musicians need to respect the reason they've been hired by not behaving like the self-absorbed rock star stereotype politicians at the G8 will be tempted to write them off as.
Well said, redhurt. I agree.
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