We've heard things like this from others *ahem* in Osais....IMO, I think he is just jealous b/c U2 are impervious to criticism at this point, and they're hotter than everm while Oasis flared big and has mostly flamed out. Nothing like having your career on the skids (at least compared to your "rivals") to inspire a bit of jealous ranting.
I love Oasis, always have, but alas, I seem to recall them being a bit of pompous airheads when they ruled the world, and everyone under the age of 50 had "...Morning Glory" on the car radio. Their problem is, they let the fame get to them. They were arrogant little bieks on record, but that never got in the way of me loving their music, and it still doesn't. But I was surprised they never went on record at the time as saying they were bigger than Jesus, b/c to hear them talk, it seemd that way.
As for Africa, and "causes": my aunt works for a small, little publicized NGO called Share, which was founded yrs ago by a woman who lost all 3 of her grandchildren, all boys , the youngest of them 9 yrs old whn he died, to AIDS a batch of tainted blood in transfusions after they were in a car accident. Rather than mope around, she used her nursing expertise and founded the group through a missionary friend of hers. She, two friends, and several of the missionaries fly to Kenya and Nigeria every yr, usually from January to April, living in remote villages that few other NGO's apprently see, teaching, and operating mobile clinics. Over Christmas my aunt showed my family a video she brought back of some of their work. It seems Dan Rather featured them on 60 Minutes or some such program a couple yrs ago. The part I rmeember most was the group going out in a motorboat to a tiny island on a lake in remote western Kenya where few whites ever came, and seeing the unbleivable povrety there, I mean, this was the raw unfiltered stuff that you don't see on TV. (My aunt had 3 versions of the prgram--2 of them being the "long" version with the really graphic stuff CBS crew cut out. I almost had to run for the bathroom, sick to my stomach.) The part that I remember most was them going into a modern-looking hospital in Nigeria on another lake and the doctors in white coats turning the faucets and no water coming out. Imagine! A hospital on the shore of a lake, 50 feet outside the front door, and no running water! It seems a Western corporation had moved in 5 yrs ago and built a Pepsi plant that was taking the running water from the lake and diverting it to the plant, and the water table was low. Women had to trudge the usual 5 miles for water from the villages, and the hospital had many AIDS patients and the staff afflicted too, too weak to haul enough water from the lake for the patients. This is before you get into the stuff like HIV orpahsn, etc...some pretty graphic stuff.
Anyone who says they are sick of Africa...there can NEVER be enough. If we don't get sick of (and compain about) fast food commericals, for example...what can peneterate our compalcency? We are willing to change the world aslong as it does not inconvenice us. Its no accident the film is called "An Inconveniant Truth"....did I mention the core of the group Share is this litte old lady, now 81 yrs old this yr, and her 2 nurse assistants, both in their 70's, they volunteer and trudge through the buxh themselves every yr in this group? What would I do? I can't honestly say I'd measure up to that commitment.
The UN accepted the word "genocide" b/c some guy ran aorund personally bugging them to have a code to prevent the Holocaust from happenig again. He used to haunt the corridors in the late 40's and send endless letters. Delegates got irritated with him and tried to have him thrown out. But as more info about the camps poured in over the months, they finally listened to him. And now we have a U.N. Declaration or whatever it is, against genocide.
Too much is NOT enough. I don't think he is as bad as he used to be, if you call it bad...but he realizes our attention span is short. Something like Anna Nicole Smith can knock it off the news and dominate the media for weeks on end (you watch).....
If he is on a lifelong mission to convince the world that black lives are as important as white ones, then it's NEVER enough.
Maybe if More people did the talking Bono would not have to do so much of it!! What has HE ever done for someone else?
