he times they have a changed. News reports tell me that Tony Blair dropped in to Bono’s for a bite to eat while en route to the Dublin Euro summit last month. Wonder if the homestead has been fumigated since.

Hardly likely. The Killiney man is on record as accepting that Blair was acting for the best, or at least that he believed that he was, when he sent in the tanks and the ‘planes to incinerate Iraqis. George Michael, Bon Jovi, even Madonna, have allowed it to be said they felt unease at the unfolding horror. But not Bono. He’s above all that now.
It’s suggested in some quarters he’s merely being polite. Or, alternatively, that he calculates he can achieve more by a whisper in the ear than shouting into Blair’s face. Surely the most likely reason for Bono welcoming the war-monger to his home is that he reckons declaring war was the right thing to do.
How did the pair pass the time between dinner and Blair helicoptering off for the Farmleigh conclave? Had he brought his guitar? Did they sit cross-legged on the plush-pile carpet and essay a few harmonies? All we are saying is give war a chance? In the name of hate? The answer my friend is blowing up Baghdad?
If the global leader of unironic rock bombast has his head half way up Bush’n’Blair’s anterior orifice, where are we to find a pop-cultural supernova still breathing clean air and capable of cutting it?
The artist formerly known as the artist formery known as Prince makes a bid. This from ‘Dear Mr. Man’, on the Minneapolis mannikin’s somewhat sensational “Musicology.”

“Dear Mr. Man, we don’t understand/
Why poor people keep struggling but U don’t lend a helping hand.../
Who said that 2 kill is a sin/
Then started every single war that Ur people been in?/
Who said that water is a precious commodity/
Then dropped a big old black oil slick in the deep blue sea?.../
Dear Mr. Man, we don’t understand/
Ain’t no sense in voting—same song with a different name/
Might not b in the back of the bus but it sure feel just the same/
Ain’t nothing fair about welfare/
Ain’t no assistance in AIDS/
We ain’t that affirmative about your actions until the people get paid.../
Mr. Man, we want 2 end this letter with 3 words/
We tired a-y’all.”

Are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck gods? I only ask because I’ve just heard a guy from something called the Evangelical Alliance on the BBC saying that the bible must be the word of god, because otherwise how come all its predictions turn out true?
My mind goes back to 1997 and the Oscar-winning Damon/Affleck script for Good Will Hunting, which had an eager fellow from the National Security Agency demanding to know why Will won’t come work for them.
“Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at the NSA, and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin’ no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, cus’ I did my job well.
“But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding... Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with, get killed.
“Now the politicians are sayin’, ‘Oh, send in the marines to secure the area’ cus’ they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, cus’ they were off pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie over there takin’ shrapnel in the ass.
“He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, cus’ he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices.
“A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, of course, maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, it ain’t too long ‘til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work.
“He can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic haemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ cus’ every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
“So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President.”
Pre-cognitive omnisience or what? Tell the Holy Trinity take a hike.Bow down to the Divine Duo.