A perfect example of why U2's Bono is full of it

VINCE: I was in the jungle, the bush, we called it...


...for approximately nine months.

SHELLY: Nine months?


My God, that really must have been something.


VINCE: Sheldon, it was unbelievable. I saw things...


They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really.


In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror...


...as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.


SHELLY: My God.

MRS. RICARDO: Oh, the things he told us.

VINCE: Oh, it was an incredible sight. Peasants screaming...


...chasing these flies down the road, waving brooms.


You can imagine the pathetic quality of this.


Waving these crudely fashioned brooms at these enormous flies...


...as they carried their children off to almost-certain death.


MRS. KORNPETT: Oh, my, that is just the most horrible thing.


SHELLY: You're sure these are flies you're talking about?


VINCE: Flies.


Natives had a name for them.


José Grecos de Muertos.


"Flamenco dancers of death."


MRS. RICARDO: You took those slides of them that never came out, remember?


SHELLY: That's a shame. I really would've liked to have seen those slides.


VINCE: Yeah, I left them in a jacket that got Martinized.


It broke my heart. Those slides would've won me the Pulitzer Prize.


The enormous flies flapping slowly away into the sunset.


Small brown babies clutched in their beaks.


SHELLY: Beaks? Flies with beaks?


A sight I'll never forget. I was stunned. Appalled.

 

I don't think you talk to much about certain topics. I've never said that. I just find it funny that you like to decide which topics are much ado.

 

Fenian is a founding member of the sj thread police with sports chick

 

You are half right.

 

I'd rather put my efforts and my money toward helping needy people in my own countries. Charity, as they say, begins at home.

 

So, by saying that I think a thread about Bono and his personal accounting is "much ado," I'm oppressing Boom and Poin'?
Such delicate flowers.

 

The link to the thread is only four posts above. Here is what I posted previously:

I don't see at so convoluted. It is a matter of mathematics.

Let's say that Bono's number 1 priority right now is Africa.
Bono donate's 40% of his money towards this cause while paying taxes on 45% of his money.
Of the 45% that goes towards taxes, Ireland follow's Bono's generosity and donates 40% towards the cause (aka 18% of Bono's income).
Bono feeling that if he only paid 10% of his income in taxes, he could increase his donation from 40% to 75% chooses to relocate the company. Instead of seeing only 18% of his taxed income go towards his number 1 priority, he is now able to place 35%.

Is this the real reason? Possibly not. I have no idea. I just can't jump down the back of a guy that spends an incredible amount of time focusing on a worthy cause because he feels that he pays too much taxes to a government that is pissing it away.

 

That's all fine and good, Pastor Crass, and that may in fact be his reasoning (though I'm not sure there is any evidence to support this beyond message board theory and U2 fans scrambling to play defense) but as I said before, poverty is poverty. Africa may be Bono's No. 1 priority, but Ireland's poverty is a real issue too. If you're going to move your headquarters to the Netherlands to save $50 million in taxes, I sure hope some of that is going to Irish charities that will help solve of their problems, otherwise I'm less convinced you're interested in saving people as you are getting the attention for saving people. I'm not one of those grumpy cynics who gets pissed when entertainers rush to solve the third world's problems while ignoring the very real problems we have in America and in the EU, and no one can deny that Bono has done a tremendous amount of good things. But I could do without the media's constant hyperbole about Bono, the way it asks questions like "Is he the most important man on the planet?" and the way Newsweek let him pose like a Christ figure on its cover, asking if he was going to change the world, should he run the World Bank, and did he deserve a Nobel prize.

Africa has serious, serious problems. What has happened in the Sudan, Rwanda, Liberia, the Congo, Sierra Leon, Zimbabwe and Somalia (among others), is in many ways, the new Holocaust. But we can't act like debt relief is going to be the cure all. It can help, but it can also perpetuate the problem. The countries there simply do not have the infrastructure, and we created some of those problems, for example, when Henry Kissinger told the the CIA to throw its weight behind Joseph Mobutu instead of Patrice Lumumba in places like Zaire because we wanted to protect our business interests. I really don't know what the answer is, but we have to get more creative. A lot of people think that the right approach is to promote more free trade with developing nations, despite their horrible human rights records, because it has worked (in some degree) with China, but that's obviously a moral grey area. Another major problem is that we can't convince African doctors (and various educated professionals) who are educated in England and the US to return to Africa and try to make a difference there. I just don't think that we can pretend that debt relief is going to solve all the problems, which Bono and Brad Pitt seem to be suggesting, and the media swallows it up like gospel.

A place like Ireland does have the infrastructure to solve a problem like poverty. And for Bono to suggest that Ireland make Africa a priority because it helps promote Bono's priorities, even though Bono seems to be protecting his personal wealth at the expense of Ireland, seems a bit disingenuous. He's done a tremendous amount of good, no question. I just think too much of it is about Bono instead of the cause. He feels like he can use his fame to do great things, and it will call attention to an issue that's otherwise being ignored, and he's right. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't be a little skeptical about him at the same time, and that we should pretend he's a Jesus figure, because clearly that's what Bono wants. Bill Gates has done incredible things for Africa, especially in the field of disease research, yet he receives probably a tenth of the attention Bono gets for the same issue, and he's doing it with his own money, not the money of world governments. Where's Gates' Nobel Prize?

 

Over-rated -- Over-rated -- Over-rated

Ask Henry Rollins his opinion of Bono and the boys- quite amusing.

I hope my level of self-importance never gets that high

 

Maybe the solution is for Bono to move to Africa.

 

I'm fairly confident Burkina Faso would consider adopting a flat tax if the Great and Powerful Bono agreed to move there, since it would still probably double their GDP.

 

Plus the daily live Oprah segments could only help tourism.