U2 Joshua Tree Tour 2019
· Night 40 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 2/3/2024
· Night 12 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 25/10/23
· Night 10 & 11 setlists for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 20/10/23 & 21/10/23
· Night 9 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 18/10/23
· Night 6, 7, & 8 setlists for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 11/10/23 - 14/10/23
· Night 5 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 08/10/23
· Night 4 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 07/10/23
· Night 3 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 05/10/23
· Night 2 videos for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 30/09/23
· Night 2 setlist for U2:UV at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 30/09/23
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U2's Bono Goes To Harvard
Posted on Thursday, June 07 @ 14:12:38 CEST by macphisto
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(Launch.com) -- U2 singer Bono, dressed in a green suit, white
V-neck shirt, backwards camouflage cap, and blue-shaded glasses, gave an
engaging 20-minute talk to an audience of 6,000 Harvard seniors and family on
Wednesday (June 6). As he pleaded for relief in the crushing debt load of
developing nations and Africa's AIDS epidemic, and spoke of "fighting
indifference versus making a difference," the college dropout distinguished
himself as the latest in an impressive list of Harvard Class Day guests that has
included Mother Teresa, playwright Arthur Miller, and Ralph
Nader.
"My name is Bono, and I am a rock star," said the singer, slightly hoarse from the previous night's two-hour show in Boston.
"I tell you this not as a boast but more as a kind of confession. Because in my view the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a
conscience, a celebrity with a cause. Worse yet is a singer with a conscience, a placard-waving, knee-jerking activist with a Lexus and a swimming pool shaped liked his head."
Though some may see Bono as preachy, if not pretentious, his commitment to action is a breath of fresh air among the screaming rock slogans that often masquerade as social consciousness. "Rock music to me is rebel
music, but rebelling against what?" Bono continued. "If I'm honest, I'm rebelling against my own indifference. I'm rebelling against the idea that
the world is the way the world is, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. So I'm trying to do a damn thing."
Bono was at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus because of
the friendship he formed with economics professor Jeffrey Sachs. The singer had sought out Sachs because of his studies on the lack of development in Third World countries, due to the old debt that those economies have been
carrying for generations. Bono had approached Sachs as a representative of Jubilee 2000, a group formed to get those debts canceled, and enlisted him in the campaign.
"Then Sachs and I, with my friend Bobby Shriver, hit the road like some sort of surreal crossover road show," Bono said. "A rock star, a Kennedy, and a noted economist crisscrossing the globe like the Partridge Family on psychotropic drugs. We had the Pope kind of acting as our agent. We had the blessing of various rabbis, evangelists, trade
unions, and PTAs. It was a new level of unhip for me. But it was very cool."
Bono's crusade has earned him audiences with President
Clinton and the Pope, who donned the singer's "Fly" sunglasses for
a photo shoot (subsequently squashed by the Vatican). But the singer has been
more than a celebrity mouthpiece--he's been a successful activist. Bono
testified before the U.S. Congress, which subsequently passed a $435 million
debt-relief package, and rallied significant players in the debt-relief cause,
including former U.S. Treasury Secretary and incoming Harvard president Lawrence
Summers. Such efforts have already yielded notable improvements in education
and medicine in countries like Uganda and Mozambique.
"When people around the world hear about the burden of
debt that crushes the poorest countries," Bono said. "When they hear
for every dollar of government aid that we send to developing nations, nine
dollars comes back to us in debt-service payments. When people hear that, they
get angry."
However, Bono cited, it's hard to get people involved an era
that finds the culture of idealism "under siege" and "reduced to
a marketing tool." He warned of the innate danger of indifference to
problems like "the everyday holocaust that is Africa," referring to
continent's bubonic plague-like epidemic of 25 million HIV positives.
"I'm not hear to brag, not to take credit or even to
share it, and not just to say thanks. I think I've come here to ask your help.
Because this is a big problem, and we need some smart people working on it.
"It's hard to make this a popular cause. It's hard to
make it 'pop,' and I guess that's what my job is. Pop is sadly often the oxygen
of politics. Didn't John and Robert Kennedy come to Harvard? Isn't
equality a sonofabitch to follow through on? Isn't 'love they neighbor in the
global village' so inconvenient? God writes us these lines, but we have to sing
them, and take them to the top of the charts. But it's not what the radio is
playing, is it?"
-- Tristram Lozaw, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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