Bono & AIDS

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="055d05a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Blithe Spirit</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U>Blithe Spirit</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id63.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="6/5 to 10/30, 2005"><U>6/5 to 10/30, 2005</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id65.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="7/23/06"><U>7/23/06</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id66.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="11/21/06"><U>11/21/06</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id64.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Quiet, please"><U>Quiet, please</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id62.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wed. Journal columns"><U>Wed. 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 Or two names, period.  One is enough for Bono, whom I keep calling Sonny, after the late legislator and husband of Cher who went with two names, though God knows Cher doesn't.</div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#993366" FACE="Courier" ><B>OUT-BILLYING BILLY </B>. . .</FONT> It's all show-biz, of course, and we love it.  But what are the <I>Sun-Times</I> and its religion reporter doing on this bus tour through darkest Iowa, and before that Nebraska, with Indiana yet to come, telling us what this excellent rock star says about health conditions far, far away?  Does Bono know something about the publisher that he promises not to tell if they put him on page one?  We should let that thought perish, no matter what's been happening in New York, where the <I>Times</I> is or was flogging the Augusta golf club story.</div> <bR> <div> But not to be allowed to perish is yet another question, which I put to myself:  Has the world stopped and kicked me off?  This entertainer with lotsabucks is travelling the world (not stoned, which is a plus), getting a cabinet officer (who just resigned) to dress funny with him in Africa, getting the president (who didn't) to sit and talk with him on camera, preaching how to be Christian with a view to a health crisis in a part of the world whose middle name is crisis?</div> <bR> <div> And getting people pumped up, at that.  If Ashley Judd had to retire in tears, it was not so with 2,000 Wheaton (Ill.) College students on the day of Bono-in-the-hat on page one.  "If these are religious folks," Bono said, referring to these students at an evangelical-Christian college, "I want to redirect them to the fire that is in the gospels."  He was the man who would be Billy Graham in Billy Graham-land.</div> <bR> <div> And by gum he did it.  These folks turned out religious after all, "screaming, clapping . . . standing and howling for Bono and his band of humanitarians," the reporter tells us, not a one of them apparently wondering what God hath wrought in this latter-day Billy Sunday (ex-White Sox player turned preacher) with his answer for AIDS in Africa.  God bless them, God bless Bono and his band, God bless us all.  It's show biz, we love it.</div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>