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Why Bono is the 'master manipulator'
Donna Jacobs, The Ottawa Citizen
"It is absurd, if not obscene, that celebrity is a door that such serious issues need to pass through before politicians take note." -- Bono
Bono, lead man for the famous Irish U2 rock band, took his name from a street sign -- the Dublin hearing aid company "Bono Vox of O'Connell Street." He shortened it first to "Bono Vox" and then to just "Bono."
Since then, he's gone beyond a "good voice" to pro bono -- Latin for "in the public good."
In 2003, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 2005, he shared the cover of Time magazine with Bill and Melinda Gates as Persons of the Year .
Bono (Paul Hewson), at 47, has become the billion-dollar charity man. The singer/songwriter's trademark leather jacket and vividly-tinted wraparound sunglasses (for his light-sensitive eyes and a bit for his vanity) give him a distinctive presence as he twists the arms of the mighty to fight poverty.
Many celebrities, for example Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, give their own money; the Jolie Pitt Foundation donated $8 million in 2006, including $1 million to Doctors Without Borders. Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation aims to rebuild New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward from Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
Bono doesn't give his own money, says University of Waterloo political science professor Andrew F. Cooper. What the musician gives is time and work, his fame and, he says, his "stubbornness" -- digging money out of other people's pockets and out of national treasuries to help Africa and to forgive Third World debt.
Mr. Cooper, in his recently-published anecdote-and quote-rich book Celebrity Diplomacy, has made an excellent study of Bono, the world's No. 1 example of celebrities-turned-diplomat or, in the author's phrase "the Bonoization of diplomacy."
While announcing a $5-billion foreign aid package in 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush said of Bono, who was sitting behind him: "Bono, I appreciate your heart, and to tell you what an influence you've had -- Dick Cheney walked in the Oval Office, he said, '(ultra-conservative Republican Senator) Jesse Helms wants us to listen to Bono's ideas'."
Former president Bill Clinton tells a similar story: "I'll never forget one day during my administration. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers arrives in the Oval Office to announce: 'You know, some guy just came in to see me in jeans and a T-shirt and he just had one name, but he sure was smart. Do you know anything about him'?"
Mr. Cooper, professor and distinguished fellow of the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), has studied celebrity diplomats from the early pacesetting Audrey Hepburn and Danny Kaye to dozens of stars and public figures, who include George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey and, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales.
For Bono, it all started in 1984 when U2 played during rocker Bob Geldof's 1984 Band Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief efforts.
Bono, then 24, and his wife, Ali, went further than those concerts. They went all the way to Wello, Ethiopia, and worked for six weeks at an orphanage.
"You'd wake up in the morning and as the mist would be lifting, you'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station," Bono recounted.
"You'd walk out of your tent and you'd count bodies of dead and abandoned children. Or worse, the father of a child would walk up to you and try to give you his living child and say, 'You take it, because if this is your child, it won't die.'
"My experience there was very hard to forget, but ... I did.
"We went back to our daily life in Ireland and me being in a band, but we'd always hoped we might be able to look at the structure of the problem. There's a certain kind of poverty that is structural, not just misfortune, and so when I heard about this plan to use the millennium as an opportunity to give the poorest countries a chance to start again (with their international debt forgiven), I thought, 'This is major, and it's the right thing to do'."
Bono's charity work is inspired partly from his own story. He grew up in Ireland during "The Troubles" with a Roman Catholic father and a Protestant mother. She died of a brain hemorrhage at her father's funeral when Bono was 14.
Religion drives and sustains him along with a healthy dose of "Catholic guilt." (He, guitarist David Evans "The Edge," and drummer Larry Mullen belonged to a charismatic Christian group called Shalom in their early years.)
He has added skills. "Bono stands out as a master manipulator, unlike his counterpart, Bob Geldof," says Mr. Cooper. The two have often teamed up on world leaders using Bono's smooth-talking good-cop approach to Geldof's rough-edged, scruffy and irreverent bad-cop style. Mr. Cooper calls Mr. Geldof "the antidiplomat."
Brilliantly successful in raising money, Mr. Geldof commandeered a global audience of 1.5 billion who tuned 93 per cent of the world's TVs to one of his benefit concerts. The 15-hour concert and recording raised $100 million.
Mr. Cooper analyses Bono's success.
One, Bono is a wordsmith -- from his musical lyrics to the media sound bites that are music to the journalist's ears.
For example: "It is absurd, if not obscene, that celebrity is a door that such serious issues need to pass through before politicians take note," Bono said. "But there it is. The idea has a force of its own. We're making it louder. Making noise is a job description, really, for a rock star."
(It took Diana, Princess of Wales, to catalyze interest on a treaty to ban landmines. Canada's then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy had championed the cause with U.S. activist Jody Williams. She and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines shared the Nobel Peace Prize.)
Two, Bono does his homework -- seeking out, for one, Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University economy professor and one-man NGO, who gave him a crash course in international debt.
Mr. Sachs was "amply repaid," says Mr. Cooper, when Bono wrote the forward to Mr. Sach's bestselling book The End of Poverty. Mr. Sachs also travelled to Kenya with Angelina Jolie -- another fact-getter in her job as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps 20 million refugees in 120 countries.
Bono joined the London-based group Jubilee 2000 to support "the idea of the poorest countries having their debs to the richest ones cancelled out" and then launched his own foundation, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa.).
Three, he targets pivotal people and (judiciously) throws their words back at them. He also speaks their language. With Jesse Helms, he quoted scripture, describing AIDS as "the leprosy of our age." With U.S. legislators, he talks security and terrorism: "Africa is not the frontline on the war -- but it could be soon."
Four, he mentors other celebrities.
Five, he praises and criticizes. In 2003, he showed up to celebrate Paul Martin's win at the Liberal leadership convention. Two years later, he washed his hands of prime minister Martin for backing down on his promise to raise Canada's foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP.
Where would Mr. Cooper -- if he were a celebrity -- direct his star power?
"Clean water," he answers instantly. "I'm always amazed celebrities don't choose it." One exception is actor Matt Damon, main champion and co-founder of the H2O Africa Foundation (www.h2oafrica.org) whose network of NGOs and corporations builds clean water projects across Africa. Despite Mr. Damon's star status and water's crucial tie-in to poverty, disease and degraded environment, the Damon campaign has had only small-scale accomplishments, says Mr. Cooper. The foundation has found it "hard to translate its work into big clout." Clean water needs "new and more celebrity advocates," he says "diligent and committed personalities to act as its champions." Thus Ottawa-based WaterCan (www.watercan.com), whose honorary president is Margaret Trudeau, "does seem to be filling a gap." Each day, dirty water and lack of sanitation kill 5,000 children in the Third World. Globally, pathogen-infested water infects one in every three people with diseases. The diseases kill 2.2 million of them.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=bde35296-54d8-4be3-b46d-5656e92d7aa8&p=1
Donna Jacobs, The Ottawa Citizen
"It is absurd, if not obscene, that celebrity is a door that such serious issues need to pass through before politicians take note." -- Bono
Bono, lead man for the famous Irish U2 rock band, took his name from a street sign -- the Dublin hearing aid company "Bono Vox of O'Connell Street." He shortened it first to "Bono Vox" and then to just "Bono."
Since then, he's gone beyond a "good voice" to pro bono -- Latin for "in the public good."
In 2003, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 2005, he shared the cover of Time magazine with Bill and Melinda Gates as Persons of the Year .
Bono (Paul Hewson), at 47, has become the billion-dollar charity man. The singer/songwriter's trademark leather jacket and vividly-tinted wraparound sunglasses (for his light-sensitive eyes and a bit for his vanity) give him a distinctive presence as he twists the arms of the mighty to fight poverty.
Many celebrities, for example Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, give their own money; the Jolie Pitt Foundation donated $8 million in 2006, including $1 million to Doctors Without Borders. Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation aims to rebuild New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward from Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
Bono doesn't give his own money, says University of Waterloo political science professor Andrew F. Cooper. What the musician gives is time and work, his fame and, he says, his "stubbornness" -- digging money out of other people's pockets and out of national treasuries to help Africa and to forgive Third World debt.
Mr. Cooper, in his recently-published anecdote-and quote-rich book Celebrity Diplomacy, has made an excellent study of Bono, the world's No. 1 example of celebrities-turned-diplomat or, in the author's phrase "the Bonoization of diplomacy."
While announcing a $5-billion foreign aid package in 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush said of Bono, who was sitting behind him: "Bono, I appreciate your heart, and to tell you what an influence you've had -- Dick Cheney walked in the Oval Office, he said, '(ultra-conservative Republican Senator) Jesse Helms wants us to listen to Bono's ideas'."
Former president Bill Clinton tells a similar story: "I'll never forget one day during my administration. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers arrives in the Oval Office to announce: 'You know, some guy just came in to see me in jeans and a T-shirt and he just had one name, but he sure was smart. Do you know anything about him'?"
Mr. Cooper, professor and distinguished fellow of the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), has studied celebrity diplomats from the early pacesetting Audrey Hepburn and Danny Kaye to dozens of stars and public figures, who include George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey and, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales.
For Bono, it all started in 1984 when U2 played during rocker Bob Geldof's 1984 Band Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief efforts.
Bono, then 24, and his wife, Ali, went further than those concerts. They went all the way to Wello, Ethiopia, and worked for six weeks at an orphanage.
"You'd wake up in the morning and as the mist would be lifting, you'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station," Bono recounted.
"You'd walk out of your tent and you'd count bodies of dead and abandoned children. Or worse, the father of a child would walk up to you and try to give you his living child and say, 'You take it, because if this is your child, it won't die.'
"My experience there was very hard to forget, but ... I did.
"We went back to our daily life in Ireland and me being in a band, but we'd always hoped we might be able to look at the structure of the problem. There's a certain kind of poverty that is structural, not just misfortune, and so when I heard about this plan to use the millennium as an opportunity to give the poorest countries a chance to start again (with their international debt forgiven), I thought, 'This is major, and it's the right thing to do'."
Bono's charity work is inspired partly from his own story. He grew up in Ireland during "The Troubles" with a Roman Catholic father and a Protestant mother. She died of a brain hemorrhage at her father's funeral when Bono was 14.
Religion drives and sustains him along with a healthy dose of "Catholic guilt." (He, guitarist David Evans "The Edge," and drummer Larry Mullen belonged to a charismatic Christian group called Shalom in their early years.)
He has added skills. "Bono stands out as a master manipulator, unlike his counterpart, Bob Geldof," says Mr. Cooper. The two have often teamed up on world leaders using Bono's smooth-talking good-cop approach to Geldof's rough-edged, scruffy and irreverent bad-cop style. Mr. Cooper calls Mr. Geldof "the antidiplomat."
Brilliantly successful in raising money, Mr. Geldof commandeered a global audience of 1.5 billion who tuned 93 per cent of the world's TVs to one of his benefit concerts. The 15-hour concert and recording raised $100 million.
Mr. Cooper analyses Bono's success.
One, Bono is a wordsmith -- from his musical lyrics to the media sound bites that are music to the journalist's ears.
For example: "It is absurd, if not obscene, that celebrity is a door that such serious issues need to pass through before politicians take note," Bono said. "But there it is. The idea has a force of its own. We're making it louder. Making noise is a job description, really, for a rock star."
(It took Diana, Princess of Wales, to catalyze interest on a treaty to ban landmines. Canada's then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy had championed the cause with U.S. activist Jody Williams. She and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines shared the Nobel Peace Prize.)
Two, Bono does his homework -- seeking out, for one, Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University economy professor and one-man NGO, who gave him a crash course in international debt.
Mr. Sachs was "amply repaid," says Mr. Cooper, when Bono wrote the forward to Mr. Sach's bestselling book The End of Poverty. Mr. Sachs also travelled to Kenya with Angelina Jolie -- another fact-getter in her job as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps 20 million refugees in 120 countries.
Bono joined the London-based group Jubilee 2000 to support "the idea of the poorest countries having their debs to the richest ones cancelled out" and then launched his own foundation, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa.).
Three, he targets pivotal people and (judiciously) throws their words back at them. He also speaks their language. With Jesse Helms, he quoted scripture, describing AIDS as "the leprosy of our age." With U.S. legislators, he talks security and terrorism: "Africa is not the frontline on the war -- but it could be soon."
Four, he mentors other celebrities.
Five, he praises and criticizes. In 2003, he showed up to celebrate Paul Martin's win at the Liberal leadership convention. Two years later, he washed his hands of prime minister Martin for backing down on his promise to raise Canada's foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of GDP.
Where would Mr. Cooper -- if he were a celebrity -- direct his star power?
"Clean water," he answers instantly. "I'm always amazed celebrities don't choose it." One exception is actor Matt Damon, main champion and co-founder of the H2O Africa Foundation (www.h2oafrica.org) whose network of NGOs and corporations builds clean water projects across Africa. Despite Mr. Damon's star status and water's crucial tie-in to poverty, disease and degraded environment, the Damon campaign has had only small-scale accomplishments, says Mr. Cooper. The foundation has found it "hard to translate its work into big clout." Clean water needs "new and more celebrity advocates," he says "diligent and committed personalities to act as its champions." Thus Ottawa-based WaterCan (www.watercan.com), whose honorary president is Margaret Trudeau, "does seem to be filling a gap." Each day, dirty water and lack of sanitation kill 5,000 children in the Third World. Globally, pathogen-infested water infects one in every three people with diseases. The diseases kill 2.2 million of them.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=bde35296-54d8-4be3-b46d-5656e92d7aa8&p=1
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