No Rock And Roll Fun

ALL HAIL THE GUTLESS WONDERS: If there's a photo-opportunity with a downtrodden Native American, they'll be round in a flash. But ask Sting and Annie Lennox to actually throw their weight behind something like the anti-Bush campaign, and all of a sudden, they've got elsewheres to be. Not, of course, that they're thinking of the largely conservative, middle-aged audience who keep them in hand-made clogs and ecological detergents, of course: It would just be rude to get involved:

"It wouldn't be our place to do that [join the Vote for Change tour], we're guests in this country and we don't have a vote," Sting said in a recent phone interview. "Some of my friends are on that tour and I think it's laudable what they're doing."

Hmm... interesting that it's okay for Sting to campaign for a change in, say, Brazilian government policies in the Amazon basin, but when it comes to the US politics, he feels he has to stay out of it. To be fair, George W hasn't got a record of interfering in the politics of other countries, has he? And why Sting - supposedly the ecologically concerned wise man of rock - doesn't think that the choice of a President presiding over the most polluting country in the world is something he should at least be allowed to express an interest in - is a bit of a puzzler, too.

Lennox and Sting are doing a joint jaunt round the US at the moment, and Annie came close to expressing an opinion:

"Obviously I was very glad to see the back of Saddam Hussein," Lennox added in the same interview. "But the country is a terrible mess now and I don't see how they're going to be able to extricate themselves from it without tremendous cost of money and life."

- which is a nice piece of fence sitting; tutting that it's all too bad without actually expressing an opinion on the matter.