Do They Know It's Live 8 Time At All?
So Live 8 is supposedly Sir Bob Geldof's most recent foray into helping the starving people of Africa as only a Boomtown Rat can.
At the tender age of 13 I was mesmerized by the original Live Aid concert. I don't know if the logistics were the same, but I went out and bought a copy of "Do They Know It's Christmastime?" and, even though I hated the song, I also bought a copy of "We Are the World" because it was, I felt, the way that I, as a 13 year old whose income consisted of a weekly allowance and occassional babysitting gigs, could contribute to the cause.
This time around I don't know what a 13 year old can do. Or a 33 year old for that matter. The concerts are free. There are no arrangements made for people who want to make a donation to the cause. Because any monetary contributions that could be made would be merely a drop in the bucket to solving the problem, and why bother even trying if we aren't going to be able to cure poverty and hunger today.
OK, so this is about raising awareness on what's going on in Africa today. So let's expose folks to some cool African music. Someone who can perform some good music then speak a little more directly to the extreme poverty and hunger plaguing their continent. Nope, can't do that, because the kids might change the channel if they aren't constantly bombarded by the big stars. Can't go five minutes without seeing Will Smith or Bono or Elton John, because we might change the channel. (And let's not go into the fact that there are COMMERCIALS being aired during the show). So all the African artists are on a stage in Cornwall, England, that will get maybe a minute of airtime today, because we can't miss Madonna or Paul McCartney or Pink Floyd.
Oh wait, I apologize, there is ONE African performer who will be performing. Dave Matthews. He was born in South Africa you know. We just won't draw attention to the fact that he's a white guy born in the days of Apartheid.
So how are we going to raise the awareness? Why, between every song we'll have VJ's TELLING us that we're here to raise awareness. We'll have big stars film PSA-type items about poverty - but we won't fill them with the gravitas this issue deserves. So we'll have people CHEERING for the famous people as they're talking about how someone dies every three seconds from poverty. Oh, and while all the big stars are on stage - we'll show film footage of starving Africans having fun on the screen behind them. Because while Motley Crue is rocking it old-school folks will SO be impressed by those movies in the midst of their headbanging.
But I've figured it out. Since escaping his life as Pink, and growing back his eyebrows, Sir Geldof suffers from a LOT of liberal rich white guy guilt. He needs to atone for his sins. And he knows a lot of other liberal, rich, white guy musicians. They had to work through all this guilt somehow. So they're all going to get on a stage, and tell us how not-guilty they really are. Look, I put on this big, huge, free concert about how bad poverty is, obviously I've got my priorities straight. I won't take my bazillion dollars to help solve the problem, but you'll all know that I really mean right and wish really hard we could get rid of poverty.
Now let's party down!
(Thanks to this NPR piece for helping clue me in to some of this.)
At the tender age of 13 I was mesmerized by the original Live Aid concert. I don't know if the logistics were the same, but I went out and bought a copy of "Do They Know It's Christmastime?" and, even though I hated the song, I also bought a copy of "We Are the World" because it was, I felt, the way that I, as a 13 year old whose income consisted of a weekly allowance and occassional babysitting gigs, could contribute to the cause.
This time around I don't know what a 13 year old can do. Or a 33 year old for that matter. The concerts are free. There are no arrangements made for people who want to make a donation to the cause. Because any monetary contributions that could be made would be merely a drop in the bucket to solving the problem, and why bother even trying if we aren't going to be able to cure poverty and hunger today.
OK, so this is about raising awareness on what's going on in Africa today. So let's expose folks to some cool African music. Someone who can perform some good music then speak a little more directly to the extreme poverty and hunger plaguing their continent. Nope, can't do that, because the kids might change the channel if they aren't constantly bombarded by the big stars. Can't go five minutes without seeing Will Smith or Bono or Elton John, because we might change the channel. (And let's not go into the fact that there are COMMERCIALS being aired during the show). So all the African artists are on a stage in Cornwall, England, that will get maybe a minute of airtime today, because we can't miss Madonna or Paul McCartney or Pink Floyd.
Oh wait, I apologize, there is ONE African performer who will be performing. Dave Matthews. He was born in South Africa you know. We just won't draw attention to the fact that he's a white guy born in the days of Apartheid.
So how are we going to raise the awareness? Why, between every song we'll have VJ's TELLING us that we're here to raise awareness. We'll have big stars film PSA-type items about poverty - but we won't fill them with the gravitas this issue deserves. So we'll have people CHEERING for the famous people as they're talking about how someone dies every three seconds from poverty. Oh, and while all the big stars are on stage - we'll show film footage of starving Africans having fun on the screen behind them. Because while Motley Crue is rocking it old-school folks will SO be impressed by those movies in the midst of their headbanging.
But I've figured it out. Since escaping his life as Pink, and growing back his eyebrows, Sir Geldof suffers from a LOT of liberal rich white guy guilt. He needs to atone for his sins. And he knows a lot of other liberal, rich, white guy musicians. They had to work through all this guilt somehow. So they're all going to get on a stage, and tell us how not-guilty they really are. Look, I put on this big, huge, free concert about how bad poverty is, obviously I've got my priorities straight. I won't take my bazillion dollars to help solve the problem, but you'll all know that I really mean right and wish really hard we could get rid of poverty.
Now let's party down!
(Thanks to this NPR piece for helping clue me in to some of this.)
posted by Swankette at 9:04 AM
3 Comments:
I liked the IDEA of Live 8, but agree with you on all points (one of my favorite MSNBC blogger, Eric Alterman, said the same things). How hard would have been to set up a call in number for donations or request food or money dontations at the entrances of the concerts? Awareness is important, but it doesn't put food on the table.
I didn't actually see any of the Live8 coverage, so I can't comment on that, but I can comment on the "what you can do" part. There are any number of organizations working on lobbying the President and Congress to provide more money to African countries to fight HIV/AIDS and Malaria, and to relieve debts so that governments can spend money on health care and education. My personal favorite is Catholic Relief Services (www.crs.org) but I'll bet the ONE campaign has its own website. If they didn't put anything up to teach people how they could share their voice with elected officials, then shame on them, I say, shame!
I do have to say that I saw a PSA Bono did once on Africa. His music meant so much to me (and still does) that I ended up crying by the end. Ed Asner can't do that, nor even Martin Sheen. Music moves you. And when musicians who move you by grooving you, they're likely to be pretty effective about moving you into action, too, assuming they know where to lead you.
pax
Matt
Y'know, if they had actually charged for those concert tickets and negotiated a cut of the ad revenues (and perhaps forgone the swanky gift bags), they could have just made a donation to debt relief. It seems to me that would have been far more effective financially, and would still have raised awareness.
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