NYC Letter: GWB & Bono

We are not fans of celebrities dighted out in designer punk who appoint themselves to put the world to rights. But even we gave Bono a full read here:

Q: You went from friend of Bill Clinton to flashing a peace sign in a photo op with George W Bush.

A: I was in a photo with President Bush because he’d put $10 billion over three years on the table in a breakthrough increase in foreign assistance called the Millennium Challenge. I had just got back from accompanying the president as he announced this at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Q: So you liked this man?

A: Yes. As a man, I believed him when he said he was moved to also do something about the Aids pandemic. I believed him. Listen, I couldn’t come from a more different place, politically, socially, geographically. I had to make a leap of faith to sit there. He didn’t have to have me there at all. But you don’t have to be harmonious on everything — just one thing — to get along with someone.

Q: What was your gut feeling the first time you came face to face with President Bush?

A: He was very funny and quick. Just quick-witted. With him, I got pretty quickly to the point, and the point was an unarguable one — that 6,500 people dying every day of a preventable and treatable disease [Aids] would not be acceptable anywhere else in the world other than Africa, and that before God and history this was a kind of racism that was unacceptable.

And he agreed: "Yeah, it’s unacceptable." He said: "In fact, it’s a kind of genocide."

He really helped us in using that word. He knew it was hyperbole, but it was effective. We get on very well. I couldn’t come from a more different place. We disagree on so many things. But he was moved by my account of what was happening in Africa. He was engaged.

Q: But you must have disagreed with him at some point.

A: He banged the table at me once, when I was ranting at him about the ARVs [Aids drugs] not getting out quick enough. I’m Irish. When we get excited we don’t pause for breath, no full stops or commas. He banged the table to ask me to let him reply. He smilingly reminded me he was the president. It was a heated debate. I was very impressed that he could get so passionate. And, let’s face it, tolerating an Irish rock star is not a necessity of his office.

There's more. The JPII tale is quite funny, if true. And funny if not true.

[Hat tip: Judith Weiss]