June 9, 2005

Live 8 skepticism.

Here's a NYT article about Live 8. It's mostly about the different motivations of different types of pop stars deciding to participate.

About that "A-list bloggers" conference call, Sissy Willis is "not amused." I understand the skepticism, but we were all skeptical too.
Posted by Ann Althouse at 8:12 AM

4 comments:

Sloanasaurus said...

Perhaps Sir Bob should get a Dubya's Ipod play list.....

Another good way for Sir Bob to help hunger in Africa would be to advocate the bombing of Mugabe's presidential palace in Zimbabwe (and to convince Chirac and the rest of Left Europe to support the move). Getting rid of Mugbae will do more to end hunger in Africa than any live aid concert.

6/9/05, 9:04 AM
Ann Althouse said...

Jim: Believe me. I wasn't starstruck. I might have been if I were much younger, but really, I don't have such feelings about celebrities, and I've never had any interest in Bob Geldof. (Maybe if it was Bono...)

I felt that once asked to participate, I'd be a jerk to say no, and mostly I was just impressed by all the factual information Geldof had. The sheer numbers of people suffering and our terrible tendency to just give up and think of Africa as hopeless -- that made it impossible to back out, even as the phone call went on over an hour. I was literally compelled to participate, and it wasn't fun as Geldof went on and on and always had one more horrible fact to needle us with.

6/9/05, 9:44 AM
Joaquin said...

To continue to throw money at the problems in Africa is like my uncle Juan used to say, "pissing on a forest fire"
Take away Egypt and the now quickly deteriorating South Africa and what do you have?
Until we have fundamental government changes that create a comfortable climate to attract foreign capital investments, you will continue to have the human hell that is Africa today.

6/9/05, 10:43 AM
Ann Althouse said...

Dax: What makes you think Geldof is saying something other than that? Geldof isn't asking for any money this time. It's all about free (or fair) trade and political change.

6/9/05, 11:15 AM

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