Geldof's Glory Daze
It seems that some of my fellow bloggers are somewhat enamored of Bob Geldof and his London Live 8, but I can't seem to get myself even remotely excited about this latest bit of star-studded, hyper-media-saturated, pat yourself on the back pop-music activism on the part of some of the most insufferably narcissistic and ridiculously moronic people ever collected across the Western front.
And the whole thing isn't even pretending to be a charity concert this time around; instead, we're foisted some feel-good, post-seventies, pseudo-consciousness-raising session comprised of a bunch of Mariah Carey fans and hardcore Bono enthusiasts cheering and clapping while their favorite millionaires mumble inescapably pithy soundbites about poverty and world hunger and how we all need to "do something about it" as the flashbulbs go *pop* and the acolytes pass out from too much beer in the London heat.
Coldplay, Elton John, Paul McCartney, REM, Stevie Wonder, U2, Madonna, Robbie Williams . . . oh, yawn! They even have Pink Floyd reuniting, and yet, for what? A giant "Forgive Them Their Debts" pep rally? Are we now Mommy and Daddy who need to just ease up on little junior's excess charges on the Visa card? This is three hundred frickin' billion dollars, people. Where the hell did it go? The Bush Administration gets eviscerated for an estimated $180 billion to $245 billion war and reconstruction effort in Iraq that will actually gain the West something inestimably valuable by forever changing the face of Middle Eastern politics, yet it's okay to just flush $300 billion down the Dark Continent's crapper just so we can move back to square one and start handing it out all over again?
I don't think so.
"I will not accept any more people dying on my TV in my sitting room every night," said Geldof (Well, then Bobby -- turn off your television, get off your ass, go to Africa and spend your life working in the villages, I mean, if you care so much about it). "It's just possible that we can reach down the ladder (how deliciously condescending!) and say to those dudes ("those dudes" being the African people) 'Let's give you a hand up.'"
Oh, bravo. I suppose next we'll be listening to a bunch of coked-up actors telling governments how to manage their foreign policies . . . oh, right.
Geldof has urged the 130,000 concert goers, plus up to a million other people, to then march across the country (post revelry, of course -- who can think about marching when Snoop Dogg is on stage? Fashizzle!) and gather in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh as the leaders of the world's industrial countries meet at the next G8 summit to attempt to hammer out crushingly tedious trade agreements and thankless economic policies. All the while, a million straggly Brits in need of a bath will be pissing in the alleys and brawling in the Scottish pubs as a bunch of retarded anarchists happily smash the windows of any McDonald's, Nike and Starbucks in sight . . . all for Africa, of course.
Then, I suppose, everybody will join hands, chant Kum-ba-ya, Robert Mugabe will keel over with a heart attack and *poof* children will be flying kites again in Zimbabwe.
Charming.
And all because Sting is scheduled to flog his tired old greatest hits pony (yet again) before the merry old march to Scotland? Even David Bowie and Mick Jagger realized what a crock a s**t the whole thing is. Both were invited, both declined. I'm sure the reply went something like this: "Gee, thanks, but we'll sit this whorish 80's revival out, Bob -- you know, because the last one did so much to change things, and, well, we don't actually have to manufacture reasons for the paparazzi to pay attention to us."
What's next -- Michael Jackson's "We Are the World 2" featuring the Vienna Boys Choir? It'd make just as much sense.