Catablog

Citizen Bono Brings Africa to Idle Rich

March 12, 2007


If you are a rock star with a touch of the messiah complex, saving the world one song at a time has its limits. Even John Lennon didn't make much progress on world peace before he died. So Bono, the rare rock star with an ability to make a dent in something besides the pop charts, has met with everyone from Pope John Paul II to President Bush in an effort to achieve debt relief and address poverty and AIDS in the undeveloped world. He is also pushing his agenda one T-shirt at a time with a product line called Red that includes clothing, iPods and credit cards. But even those combined efforts have been slow going. So now Bono is opening up another front with an unlikely weapon: as the guest editor of the July issue of Vanity Fair, he will try to rebrand Africa. "We need to get better at storytelling," Bono said, sitting in the 22nd floor of the office of Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. "Bill Gates tells me this all the time. We've got to get better at telling the success stories of Africa in addition to the horror stories. And this magazine tells great stories." Read the complete article here.