Post by Teddy Bear on May 7, 2009 21:33:01 GMT
The writer below wonders why the BBC is so enamoured by Bono.
Somebody who preaches left leaning ideals while practising something entirely different.
Any surprise they go hand in hand?
Somebody who preaches left leaning ideals while practising something entirely different.
Any surprise they go hand in hand?
Why is the BBC so in love with Bono when he's a dreadful old hypocrite?
By Christopher Hart
From the fuss that some are making - well, the BBC is making anyway - you would think it was a long-lost sonnet of Shakespeare or at the very least a newly discovered poem by Philip Larkin.
Indeed, the BBC press office is in full gush-mode as it unveils its latest poetry reading addition to the Radio 4 schedule. 'Unique,' they drool. 'An atmospheric and artistic radio feature... purposefully quintessential'.
How wonderful, you might think. Better tune in for that one - a real cultural coup from Auntie at last. Sadly, though, as is so often the case with the Beeb nowadays, its sell is somewhat different to the reality.
In fact, what they're all getting so excited about is a baffling 850-line epic entitled Elvis: American David. And its author? The BBC's in-house Saint, U2's Bono. Or, as he was more conventionally christened, Paul Hewson.
Bono has always had all the usual egomaniac rock star mannerisms. Going by a coolsounding nickname, like Sting or Madonna, is one of them. Bono actually means 'good', a moniker the great man has accepted with his customary modesty.
Similarly, every good rock god must bestow equally ridiculous labels on his long-suffering children. Bono's contribution to this flourishing genre is to name one of his own Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q.
Tawdry
Then there's their numerous mansions in different countries, the really irritating habit of wearing sunglasses all the time and the elaborate tax avoidance schemes abroad.
But if Bono only wanted to enjoy the slightly tawdry trappings rock star success has brought him, no one would particularly complain.
What sticks in my craw is the philanthropic posturing that goes with it all. It's rather odd to make grandiose pronouncements about how climate change will hit the world's poor hardest, while flying on a private jet between your many homes.
More gob-smacking still was the recent revelation that, while demanding the rest of us pay more taxes to help address global poverty, Bono has shifted his music publishing business from Ireland to the Netherlands, thus reducing U2's own tax bill to a few pence in the pound.
Tax, after all, is for poor people. The rich have clever accountants, instead. Yet the Tax Justice Network reckons if the rich paid their taxes like the rest of us, instead of using tax havens, it would raise a staggering £255billion per annum. More than enough to tackle world poverty - in fact, enough to pay for the UN's current anti-poverty programme five times over.
Yet Bono still has one little group of ardent fans who think the sun shines out of his well-upholstered behind. Our dear old BBC, which perhaps should henceforth be called the Bono Broadcasting Corporation.
It has always been more than willing to flatter his vanity in thinking him not only a rock star, but a philanthropist, too. Now it's lauded him a poetic genius, polluting the airwaves of the generally sensible Radio 4 with his grandiose twaddle.
This is by no means the first time our licence fee has been spent on promoting the hypocrisy of Saint Bono.
Just a few months ago, the BBC gave U2 an astonishing amount of lucrative air time to plug their new album in a special campaign which saw the corporation rebranded as 'U2 equals BBC'.
It all culminated in a unique concert on the roof of Broadcasting House. Money literally couldn't buy such glowing and sustained publicity. But the album sold only 65,000 copies on its release date, compared with 133,000 for Take That's latest offering.
It seems poor old Auntie hasn't noticed that U2 don't exactly set the hearts racing like they used to. As well as this, it appears that you can't criticise Bono or his rather cushy and self-serving arrangements on the BBC without being censored.
Journalist Marina Hyde recently referred to Bono's use of tax loopholes on Radio 4's Start The Week, only for presenter Andrew Marr to immediately start harrumphing and casting doubt on the perfectly verifiable facts. And when the programme was repeated, Hyde's remarks were cut entirely.
And now we have the BBC announcing that, next week, it is to broadcast Saint Bono reading his poem, Elvis: American David. It is a gruesome outpouring of fantastically pretentious rubbish, only made worse by musical accompaniment.
Apparently, this will create what the BBC calls an 'atmospheric soundscape' of intertwined music and poetry. Yikes. It sounds like what happens when you're twiddling your tuner and can find nothing but radio static.
Slavish
But Bono's poetic self-importance is one thing. In the normal world we would all laugh at him, he would go quiet again, and that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately the BBC has long since ceased to inhabit the normal world, and is all too eager to confirm Bono's self-importance at every opportunity. It's true that the Beeb isn't the only section of the media to show a slavish devotion to celebrity culture. But surely the point about the Beeb is that it's supposed to know better.
The Beeb should know better than to indulge Bono and his band
It doesn't. Which is why next week it will be spending our money broadcasting Bono's 'poem' - inverted commas needed, surely - with the hushed reverence demanded by an Immortal Work of Art.
In case you've had the good fortune to miss it so far, here's a sample. Apologies for inflicting it on you. You can hear the whole performance next Wednesday, just in case you haven't got anything better to do, like sorting out your paperclips or putting all your CDs in alphabetical order.
It goes: 'Elvis, here come the killer bees, Head full of honey, potato chips and cheese.'
The BBC believes this is the kind of stuff that will 'make listeners view Elvis in a new light'. Well, that's true. Personally I never pictured Elvis with a head full of chips and cheese. I've always thought it was more his ample stomach which gave him trouble.
Mind you, I never thought of 'The King' dancing like a 'spastic' either - though no doubt that's because I am hopelessly pedestrian and prosaic and unable to keep up with Bono's own lofty and rapturous flights of poetic fancy.
He says: 'Elvis the ecstatic, Elvis the plastic, Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance'.
Worthless
Is it just me, or do 'ecstatic' and 'plastic' not actually rhyme? And can you imagine the paroxysms in which the BBC would have contorted itself if anyone else had dared to use the word 'spastic'?
'Elvis the bumper stickers, Elvis the white knickers, Elvis the white nigger ate at
Burger King, And just kept getting bigger...'
Perhaps, like all genuinely worthless songs, books or films, Bono's Elvis poem, with its oh-so-outrageous allusions to 'spastics' and 'niggers', is merely trying to conceal its own ineptitude by shocking us. The oldest trick in the book - and very, very tired.
All the same, inspired by the example of Elvis: American David, I have written my own poem, called 'Bono: Irish Twit', set to an 'atmospheric soundscape' of chanting leprechauns. I wonder if the BBC would be interested?
'Bono in your sunglasses, even when it rains, Bono in your private jet while the rest of us take trains, Bono with your tax affairs safely overseas, Bono, oh will you shut up, please.'
The craven reverence with which the BBC has taken to treating the ludicrous Bono is almost beyond a joke - but not quite. Let licence fee-payers everywhere keep laughing - while we still can.
By Christopher Hart
From the fuss that some are making - well, the BBC is making anyway - you would think it was a long-lost sonnet of Shakespeare or at the very least a newly discovered poem by Philip Larkin.
Indeed, the BBC press office is in full gush-mode as it unveils its latest poetry reading addition to the Radio 4 schedule. 'Unique,' they drool. 'An atmospheric and artistic radio feature... purposefully quintessential'.
How wonderful, you might think. Better tune in for that one - a real cultural coup from Auntie at last. Sadly, though, as is so often the case with the Beeb nowadays, its sell is somewhat different to the reality.
In fact, what they're all getting so excited about is a baffling 850-line epic entitled Elvis: American David. And its author? The BBC's in-house Saint, U2's Bono. Or, as he was more conventionally christened, Paul Hewson.
Bono has always had all the usual egomaniac rock star mannerisms. Going by a coolsounding nickname, like Sting or Madonna, is one of them. Bono actually means 'good', a moniker the great man has accepted with his customary modesty.
Similarly, every good rock god must bestow equally ridiculous labels on his long-suffering children. Bono's contribution to this flourishing genre is to name one of his own Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q.
Tawdry
Then there's their numerous mansions in different countries, the really irritating habit of wearing sunglasses all the time and the elaborate tax avoidance schemes abroad.
But if Bono only wanted to enjoy the slightly tawdry trappings rock star success has brought him, no one would particularly complain.
What sticks in my craw is the philanthropic posturing that goes with it all. It's rather odd to make grandiose pronouncements about how climate change will hit the world's poor hardest, while flying on a private jet between your many homes.
More gob-smacking still was the recent revelation that, while demanding the rest of us pay more taxes to help address global poverty, Bono has shifted his music publishing business from Ireland to the Netherlands, thus reducing U2's own tax bill to a few pence in the pound.
Tax, after all, is for poor people. The rich have clever accountants, instead. Yet the Tax Justice Network reckons if the rich paid their taxes like the rest of us, instead of using tax havens, it would raise a staggering £255billion per annum. More than enough to tackle world poverty - in fact, enough to pay for the UN's current anti-poverty programme five times over.
Yet Bono still has one little group of ardent fans who think the sun shines out of his well-upholstered behind. Our dear old BBC, which perhaps should henceforth be called the Bono Broadcasting Corporation.
It has always been more than willing to flatter his vanity in thinking him not only a rock star, but a philanthropist, too. Now it's lauded him a poetic genius, polluting the airwaves of the generally sensible Radio 4 with his grandiose twaddle.
This is by no means the first time our licence fee has been spent on promoting the hypocrisy of Saint Bono.
Just a few months ago, the BBC gave U2 an astonishing amount of lucrative air time to plug their new album in a special campaign which saw the corporation rebranded as 'U2 equals BBC'.
It all culminated in a unique concert on the roof of Broadcasting House. Money literally couldn't buy such glowing and sustained publicity. But the album sold only 65,000 copies on its release date, compared with 133,000 for Take That's latest offering.
It seems poor old Auntie hasn't noticed that U2 don't exactly set the hearts racing like they used to. As well as this, it appears that you can't criticise Bono or his rather cushy and self-serving arrangements on the BBC without being censored.
Journalist Marina Hyde recently referred to Bono's use of tax loopholes on Radio 4's Start The Week, only for presenter Andrew Marr to immediately start harrumphing and casting doubt on the perfectly verifiable facts. And when the programme was repeated, Hyde's remarks were cut entirely.
And now we have the BBC announcing that, next week, it is to broadcast Saint Bono reading his poem, Elvis: American David. It is a gruesome outpouring of fantastically pretentious rubbish, only made worse by musical accompaniment.
Apparently, this will create what the BBC calls an 'atmospheric soundscape' of intertwined music and poetry. Yikes. It sounds like what happens when you're twiddling your tuner and can find nothing but radio static.
Slavish
But Bono's poetic self-importance is one thing. In the normal world we would all laugh at him, he would go quiet again, and that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately the BBC has long since ceased to inhabit the normal world, and is all too eager to confirm Bono's self-importance at every opportunity. It's true that the Beeb isn't the only section of the media to show a slavish devotion to celebrity culture. But surely the point about the Beeb is that it's supposed to know better.
The Beeb should know better than to indulge Bono and his band
It doesn't. Which is why next week it will be spending our money broadcasting Bono's 'poem' - inverted commas needed, surely - with the hushed reverence demanded by an Immortal Work of Art.
In case you've had the good fortune to miss it so far, here's a sample. Apologies for inflicting it on you. You can hear the whole performance next Wednesday, just in case you haven't got anything better to do, like sorting out your paperclips or putting all your CDs in alphabetical order.
It goes: 'Elvis, here come the killer bees, Head full of honey, potato chips and cheese.'
The BBC believes this is the kind of stuff that will 'make listeners view Elvis in a new light'. Well, that's true. Personally I never pictured Elvis with a head full of chips and cheese. I've always thought it was more his ample stomach which gave him trouble.
Mind you, I never thought of 'The King' dancing like a 'spastic' either - though no doubt that's because I am hopelessly pedestrian and prosaic and unable to keep up with Bono's own lofty and rapturous flights of poetic fancy.
He says: 'Elvis the ecstatic, Elvis the plastic, Elvis the elastic with a spastic dance'.
Worthless
Is it just me, or do 'ecstatic' and 'plastic' not actually rhyme? And can you imagine the paroxysms in which the BBC would have contorted itself if anyone else had dared to use the word 'spastic'?
'Elvis the bumper stickers, Elvis the white knickers, Elvis the white nigger ate at
Burger King, And just kept getting bigger...'
Perhaps, like all genuinely worthless songs, books or films, Bono's Elvis poem, with its oh-so-outrageous allusions to 'spastics' and 'niggers', is merely trying to conceal its own ineptitude by shocking us. The oldest trick in the book - and very, very tired.
All the same, inspired by the example of Elvis: American David, I have written my own poem, called 'Bono: Irish Twit', set to an 'atmospheric soundscape' of chanting leprechauns. I wonder if the BBC would be interested?
'Bono in your sunglasses, even when it rains, Bono in your private jet while the rest of us take trains, Bono with your tax affairs safely overseas, Bono, oh will you shut up, please.'
The craven reverence with which the BBC has taken to treating the ludicrous Bono is almost beyond a joke - but not quite. Let licence fee-payers everywhere keep laughing - while we still can.