peaccenicked
18th April 2002, 17:01
From "Time music goes global"
"The images may have faded, but Bono's curiosity did not. In 1999, the singer got involved with Jubilee 2000, now known as Drop the Debt, a London-based coalition of academics and activists who equated Third World debt with slavery. In the course of his work with the campaign Bono has met with Presidents, Prime Ministers and the Pope to get attention for the issue. He relishes the incongruity of a rock star talking about world policy, but he backs it up by knowing his stuff. He reads economics tomes and did some unofficial studying at Harvard. "I think that politicians are attracted at first by the celebrity," says Harvard economics guru Jeffrey Sachs, who has huddled with Bono and the Pope on the debt issue. "But once they meet him, they find that he is an outstandingly capable interlocutor." Senator Jesse Helms met with Bono to talk about starving children in Africa and ended up weeping—marking the first time a rocker has inspired an emotion in the Senator from North Carolina other than perhaps outrage."
"The images may have faded, but Bono's curiosity did not. In 1999, the singer got involved with Jubilee 2000, now known as Drop the Debt, a London-based coalition of academics and activists who equated Third World debt with slavery. In the course of his work with the campaign Bono has met with Presidents, Prime Ministers and the Pope to get attention for the issue. He relishes the incongruity of a rock star talking about world policy, but he backs it up by knowing his stuff. He reads economics tomes and did some unofficial studying at Harvard. "I think that politicians are attracted at first by the celebrity," says Harvard economics guru Jeffrey Sachs, who has huddled with Bono and the Pope on the debt issue. "But once they meet him, they find that he is an outstandingly capable interlocutor." Senator Jesse Helms met with Bono to talk about starving children in Africa and ended up weeping—marking the first time a rocker has inspired an emotion in the Senator from North Carolina other than perhaps outrage."