U2 has disappointed me? WTF?

OK, everyone knows I love U2. And many of you know U2 has recently collaborated with Green Day to create a benefit single raising money for Hurricane Katrina relief. This is a good thing, the kind of good thing U2 has done throughout their career. The song itself is OK (a little less Green Day and a little more U2 would make it better of course) and it's been the theme song of the New Orleans Saints astonishingly successful year in the NFL.

What do I think of Green Day? Not too much. Instrumentally, they bang the same three chords on their guitars as if they were percussion devices. The drumline is almost always the same, insipid beat. Billy Joe Armstrong sings from his heart, but his heart sounds as if it were located in his nasal cavity. I realize Green Day receives tolerance for all this because they are "punk" and in "punk" you're not supposed to care about what your music sounds like or something. So why is it that every legitimate "punk" I've met thinks Green Day is a group of pretentious sellout wannabes?

Furthermore, you have Green Day's politics, which they wear on their sleeve, which is fine. They obviously don't support the Iraq War or the Bush Administration, and this is OK--there are many good reasons against the war and many smart people who don't support it. But I don't think I've ever agreed with anyone as much as Brandon Flowers of The Killers who ballsily proclaimed that American Idiot (Green Day's supposed magnum opus) is predicated entirely on "calculated anti-Americanism" for their own financial benefit. (How "punk".) Flowers understands that, while there are many intelligient people in the anti-war crowd, there are just as many enthusiastic simpletons who will laugh at any anti-Bush joke, believe any cockamamey conspiracy theory, and buy any supposed protest album. Green Day is the musical equivalent of the hack guest on the Daily Show who understands that, as conversation with Stewart lags, easy applause and raucous cheering can be generated by the even the most unintelligent jab at the administration.

That said, when I heard that U2 was collaborating with Green Day on a song, I marvelled, once again, at the size of Bono's heart. His desire to help doesn't stop at the millions starving or suffering AIDS in Africa--he also seeks to help the musically untalented: Billy Joe and Green Day. So together the two bands wrote a semi-decent song about the sad and frustrating disaster that followed in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina's impact into New Orleans. And I was OK with that, because that's something worthy of frustration and definately worth remembering and learning from.

But then, the other day at Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka, I saw the video for this song. I was pissed. Anyway, I embed it here for your critical attention:



The first half of the video is OK, if slightly exploitative. The single, after all, is designed to raise money for Katrina relief, and people should be reminded of those images. But then, halfway into the video, asinine, grade school fantasy begins:

TROOPS REDEPLOYED FROM IRAQ TO NEW ORLEANS!

US military capital magically does wonderful things that cannot be done! Tanks go plowing through flooded streets! Two-Seat Apache Gunship helicopters are somehow rigged to collect the stranded from their rooftops! Harrier jumpjets somehow can precisely drop sandbags to patch up busted levies! And food drops are performed, inexplicably, by Stealth Bombers of all things! What a mystically retarded idea! At the very end, the video focuses on a sign: "NOT AS SEEN ON TV".

ZING! Take that, you warmongering Commander-in-Chief!

Did anyone who took part in making that video pay attention to the facts in the news, or were they too busy shitting their pants at the imagery on the TV sets to listen? For the record, state and local botched Katrina preparation, and state and federal botched response. The problem wasn't a lack of manpower (or fighter jets), as the video suggests, but rather a lack of coordination between various disaster relief groups and the national guard. While anarchy reigned at the superdome and while people starved on their rooftops, thousands of aid workers sat outside New Orleans, thumbs basically up asses, waiting to be told what to do by coordinators who didn't know what to do or which boss to respond to. It was a huge mess at the highest levels, and for that, Bush definately deserves a slice of blame--as do Governer Landrieu and Mayor Nagin and a slew of other executives. (Pop Quiz: Which among these people remains the only person big enough to publicly accept a share of blame and apologize?)

Just for the sake of argument, let's indulge the fantasies of the video's creators: First, Katrina hits New Orleans. Immediately, Bush violates hundreds of agreements with the Iraqi government, other allies in Iraq, the US Congress, and the United Nations, and orders the immediate withdrawal of all troops from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Mexico. The troops then join the already gigantic clusterfuck of relief personnel and National Guard troops to help create the largest clusterfuck in human history. The entire US military now sits in aircraft carriers, submarines, tanks, cockpits, and waits for coordinated orders to start magically rigging their vehicles to perform impossible feats. Of course the coordination at the top is only further overwhelmed by the addition of all the unneeeded resources.

And, while all this is happening, Shiites and Sunni begin the genocide competition in earnest, and, in the power vacuum created by America's moronic departure, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Iran sweep in to protect their favorite religious sects and seize oil fields along the way. Things get unimaginably worse in New Orleans, Iraq, and the entire world, and in a year Green Day and U2 collaborate on a video blaming the President for the reckless slaughter of millions of middle-easterners.

Right. And Bush is the idiot?

I still love U2, and I still think Bono is the greatest philanthropist alive. Because I owe U2 for all the wonderful music over the years, I'm gonna credit this "dookie" of a video to the morons in the Green Day camp. But please, U2 ... if you're reading this ... no more charity collaborations with stupid and horrible bands, OK?