How Strong is Star Power?
June 4, 2007
Bono, the Irish singer who will sing at an anti-poverty concert next week to protest at the policies of the richest nations, certainly gets around.
Last year he was photographed shaking hands with US President George W. Bush. Hard-line protesters were scandalized, but the U2 star says he would dine with the Devil himself to help the cause.
The "Raise Your Voice Against Poverty" concert held on June 7 in the German city of Rostock has been dubbed the P8, or Poverty Eight, a dig at the world's wealthiest countries participating in the G8 summit.
Like another Irish rock star, Bob Geldof, Bono is dedicated to relieving poverty in Africa and fears the G8 nations offer too little help or may wriggle out of existing promises.
Send Merkel an e-card
The stars, and anyone who visits the multilingual P8 website www.deinestimmegegenarmut.de can send German Chancellor Angela Merkel an e-postcard warning her to "keep her word" at the June 6-8 summit in Heiligendamm.
Celebrity protest is something new to serious-minded Germany, where protest movements often come with a complete worldview and are suspicious of elites.
There are two quite different kinds of musicians who perform against globalization. One category is the voice of the German hard left, which objects to the existence of the G8, accusing the seven western nations and Russia of oppressing the world.
A Berlin festival in April, called Move against G8, and gigs by Hamburg musicians Jan Delay and Bernadette La Hengst appeal to radicals who aim to disrupt the summit.
The musical pragmatists
Stars like Bono and Geldof belong to a category that could be described as pragmatic rather than leftist: they stress that world leaders need a push to save the world.
Many in the protest movement appreciate the star presence because it diverts the attention of the media away from preening politicians towards the anti-poverty message.
"We call it the redistribution of the cameras," quipped Tobias Kahler of DATA, an anti-poverty campaign group that welcomes star backing.
Geldof is set to win huge attention in Germany as guest editor-in-chief of Bild, Germany's biggest-circulation newspaper, giving it a temporary makeover which will include a series of stories about Africa.
The German-language version of Vanity Fair has done a glossy cover with Claudia Schiffer, Orlando Bloom, George Clooney, Heidi Klum, Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz and P. Diddy wearing white "Raise Your Voice Against Poverty" armbands.
In an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit, Bono said, "What does it matter what their motivations are if the ideas are right?" That is a point of view that dismays some deeply serious German activists.
Do celebrities dilute the message?
"I'm ambivalent about the whole thing," said Peter Wahl, coordinator of the European anti-globalization network Attac, recalling the Live 8 concerts which coincided with the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, when Geldof said the battle on poverty had almost been won. That proved premature.
On the other hand, it was a good thing to have as much influence as possible on the side of those who view globalization critically, said Wahl, whose group has also benefited from a celebrity or two in its ranks.
Simon Teune, an academic who studies protest movements at the Berlin Studies Center, says a survey of several campaigns shows that "the original objectives of civic movements get watered down whenever celebrities come on board."
The faces tend to package their social criticism in a generalized way and to drop the radical edge.
"They say they are against poverty. So what? Do you know anyone who is in favor of poverty?" he said.
The celebrities focus on phenomena that can readily be portrayed as scandalous, but do not point any finger at the political and social causes of the crises, he said.
"That is why a majority of the critics of the G8 are not too rapt about all the celebrities jumping in to lend their support," Teune explained.