U2Kitten said:
There is no battle. I just think most of you are letting what you WANT to think of Bono take over for what the truth may actually be. I guess this is the wrong place to preach, though. Maybe I will try a thread on EYKIW. Or maybe I will just shut up!
Well maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly.
Based on your posts, the way I understand it is that your criticism stem from Bono blowing money on houses, cars, nice hotels, etc while you understand that at the same time he's asking people like you and I to make sacrifices for Africa. Am I on the wrong track?
I guess if we are understanding each other, my questions are this:
1) Where did you get the idea that Bono is asking us to make sacrifices like give up our money, cars, houses, vacations etc? I've never heard him say this. I have, however, heard him say many times that this is not about money and donating to charity but about voicing our opinions to Congress and following through with our votes. Justice, not charity - his words, not mine.
If it were that he was asking us to do this, give up everything and be more like martyrs (kind of like Rich Mullins, if we need and example from music), then yes I would agree he's a flaming hypocrite. But he's not asking anyone to do that, period.
2) Like you said earlier, he's spent a lot of time lobbying political groups and governments to drop debt and increase aid, which is ultimately paid for by the taxes of people like you and I. However, of everyone in the debate, Bono pays MORE in income taxes than most likely ALL of us combined. He's already giving more to charity (millions, and that's just the unpublished figure) and millions to the Irish government in taxes. He's already practicing what he preaches. He's never said that he hates paying taxes and doesn't want to pay his income taxes.
It's not like he's saying we should lobby for Congress to make a NEW tax that goes directly to Africa - no one wants to pay, or should pay more taxes. He's simply asking that the money the government ALREADY has in taxes be allocated more fairly. We spend what like a billion dollars a week on this war we can't even win, but private foundations are out there giving more in aid than our own government? That's sick! The money is there, it's just not going in the right direction.
3) You're calling us out saying that we only see what we want to see, but in reality all of YOUR arguments are based on terrible written, misinformed news articles, not on ANY of the facts and figures regarding how much Bono donates, how much debt has been relieved, how much more money has gone into the Global Fund, what types of programs have been funded or started by or because of Bono.
The problem is that your "truth" is more like celebrity gossip and conspiracy theory than good hard evidence.