i have many mixed feelings.
i love Bono. i love U2. aside from Oprah -- who can get Americans to buy a million copies of freaking "Anna Karennina" just by mentioning it on her show -- Bono is probably the most influential person in popular culture. he has used his power for good, and this must be applauded, but let's also add the caveat that, in a better world, this would be the norm for the mega-wealthy and not the exception.
i think Bono would agree with that.
it's less that what i think Bono has done is so special, in and of itself, and more that what Bono has done should be what we expect from those who have been given lives of unthinkable privilege -- whether private citizens or powerful first world nations like the US, the UK, France, Australia, etc.
what's also so impressive about Bono is that the Vertigo tour is, in many ways, entirely in support of his charitable works. make no mistake -- all those names that the One campaign now has as a result of Bono's speechifying before "one" do much to increase his political clout, as if U2 is morphing from a rock band and into an instrument of social change, that the music is now in service of the cause, kind of paralleling how Edge says he doesn't play guitar he uses a guitar to play U2 songs. and this makes logical sense -- U2 has never been about music, it's been about using music to get to other places, other colors, other ideas.
so, yeah, Bono rocks and all, but what is bothering me a little bit is that, especially when you look back on all of Time's previous Persons of the Year, this choice seems a little feel-good, a little pop, a little "give the people what they want and by the way what will sell the most magazine covers." maybe my thinking is old and fusty and dusty, but i think there are many other people who exert greater control over how people's lives are conducted on the planet, which is why i thought Mother Nature was the obvious choice for Person of the Year. this was a year defined by catastrophe, bookended by a tsunami and an earthquake with a calamatous hurricane in the middle that ripped apart the patina of progress and modernity of the United States to reveal that, yes, even the most powerful is dwarfed by nature, and, yes, race and class are inextricably tied together, especially in the American South, and that, as is true in Banda Ache and Kashmire, it is always, always the poor with the least to loose who loose the most.
that seems to be to the the accurate, hard-nosed pick; Bono and Mr. and Mrs. Gates seem to be the feel-good picks.
so ... mixed feelings.
but, yay for Bono. my hope is that it encourages other celebrities to do more work of substance.
And they give so much in education scholarships 
)
Darby
