Bono praises Pence and presumably not for a bet

No Rock And Roll Fun isn't - you might have noticed - as busy as it has been traditionally, mainly because who the hell has the energy to write about an ecosystem that has somehow evolved Rag N Bone Man and everyone takes him seriously?

But the blog remains open, and from time to time I'll be posting here when there's something that warrants it. And something that warrants it is... well, this:

Enjoyed chatting w/ Bono at @MunSecConf. Discussed prior effort to twice pass Africa AIDS assistance & future security in developing nations pic.twitter.com/LJcvF4mXid

— Vice President Pence (@VP) February 18, 2017

Yes, that's long-time friend of the unpleasant Bono shaking warmly the hand of Mike Pence, enabler-in-chief to Donald Trump. This was during a meeting yesterday in Munich.

Bono also took the chance to praise Pence. He lauded Pence for "hitting the ground running", which is a bit like applauding bird flu for being especially virulent. Then tried to find a reason for touching the man that would play well to the liberal audience Bono believes still values him:

According to a pool report, the two men shared an exchange about the 2003 passage of the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief and its 2008 renewal, which Pence advocated for as an Indiana congressman.

"Twice on the House floor you defended that. That’s how we know you," Bono, who has been a vocal proponent of the fight against AIDS, told Pence.

"And we really appreciate it," he added.

It's true, Pence DID support the Emergency Plan back in 2008. However, this was the same Pence who - in 2000 - tried to derail the Ryan White Care Act:

“Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus,” read an LGBT section of Pence’s website, called Strengthening the American Family.

So had he changed his mind since then, and is he helping the fight against AIDS?

Well, no. He's making it worse, and singlehandedly helped create an HIV crisis in Indiana:

Pence first laid the groundwork for Indiana’s HIV outbreak as a congressman back in 2011, when the House passed his amendment to defund Planned Parenthood. Then in 2013, Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, Scott County’s one Planned Parenthood closed in the wake of public health spending cuts. Since that particular Planned Parenthood was also the county’s only HIV testing center, there was no longer a place for the county’s 24,000 residents to get tested.

Nearly 20 percent of Scott County residents live below the poverty line. Injection drug use there is a major problem, increasing the risk of HIV outbreak.

Fast-forward to 2015. Local health officials began to report HIV cases linked to intravenous prescription opioid use in Scott County. Scott County residents were sharing needles to inject their opioids, and nobody was getting tested.

The situation quickly spiraled out of control. At the height of the outbreak, 20 new cases of HIV were being diagnosed each week, reaching a total of nearly 200 cases by the time the outbreak was finally under control.

Maybe if Bono had a spine, or perhaps didn't need to be loved so much, he might have mentioned this.

Maybe if Bono had a spine, he'd have drawn the link between the defunding of sexual health providers in Indiana, and the Trump-Pence White House's first executive order. That's the one which pulls funding from any organisation working overseas which mentions abortions as an option.

The executive order was restoring an older, Bush-era rule. And how did that work out?

Implementation of the global gag rule went well beyond abortion to effectively limit all discussions of family planning, including condom use to prevent HIV infection and multiyear spacing of pregnancies to avoid maternal deaths. Organizations as diverse as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and Family Health International lost millions of dollars in support from the US government during the years the gag rule was enforced.

Bono - who is such a useful idiot he's more the Swiss Army Knife of Idiots - is shaking the hand of a man who has created an HIV crisis in his home state, and is part of a White House that's making rules that will stop condom use and education overseas, and praising him as a great warrior in the fight against HIV.

After this meeting, Bono moved on to take a selfie with Famine, noting that the famous Horseman had really "cut through and found a way to persuade people to eat up their leftovers."

Kate Bush: the darling's bad; for May

Kate Bush doesn't give a lot of interviews. After the last twenty-four hours, she might figure she'll do rather fewer in future.

As part of a wide-ranging discussion with Elio Iannacci for Macleans Magazine, the conversation turned to politics - and, in particular, Hillary Clinton's inability to seize the White House. It was here that Kate uttered the words which curdled many a morning yoghurt:

We have a female prime minister here in the UK. I actually really like her and think she’s wonderful. I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. She’s a very intelligent woman but I don’t see much to fear. I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She’s very sensible and I think that’s a good thing at this point in time.

Now, Kate Bush talking warmly about a Tory prime minister might be disappointing, but surely at a time when we've got actual fascists about to take office space in the White House, the small mercy that she wasn't bellowing "Brexit now" and bigging up the Farage must count for something.

More importantly, if you're going to quote the reply, you should probably look at the question, too:

A track called “Waking the Witch”—which was released in 1985—was performed for Before The Dawn. You once said that the song was about “the fear of women’s power.” With regards to Hillary Clinton’s recent defeat, do you think that this fear is stronger than ever?

So when Kate was talking about not having any reason to fear, she wasn't saying from May's policies, but fear of the idea of a woman leading a nation. Her comment was about temperament and gender, not policy and manifesto.

That's still disappointing - she seems to have confused May's caught in the headlights paralysis for a softly, softly caution - but reading Twitter over the last 24 hours you might have thought that Bush had been found negotiating the sale of NHS hospitals direct to Richard Branson.

And it's possible that Kate Bush does wholeheartedly embrace the Tory government, from the strange smell leaking out of Jeremy Hunt, through the slithering of Boris Johnson, to the chums of Liam Fox. And, let's face it, she's comfortably off and clearly had a lot of piano lessons as a small child, neither of which are signifiers of dyed-in-the-wool socialism.

But this interview doesn't really give much evidence one way or the other.

The really problematic bit of the interview was this exchange:

Q: Stephen Hawking recently said the Earth only has 1,000 years left. As someone who has written about environmental issues, does that alarm you?

A: Well, nobody really knows, do they? They told Stephen Hawking he only had a year left to live and how many years ago was that? You can’t know it all. If ever there’s been somebody to hold as an icon of sheer determination and willpower, it’s that guy, let alone any of the things he’s done scientifically. I’m sure that’s his driving force, but he’s a miracle and an aspiration.

For "someone who has written about environmental issues", giving an answer which ignores the environment and instead focuses on how Stephen Hawking didn't accept a diagnosis is heartbreaking. It seems to be implying that all we need to do abotu climate change is pop over to the burning fires of Siberia, stick up a couple of motivational posters, tell the planet to believe in itself and everything will be fine.

In all the coverage of Bush's interview yesterday, BBC News came up with the oddest angle:

Bush previously wrote a song for a sketch on a 1990 episode of TV series The Comic Strip, about the former Labour Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

The lyrics included: "Look to the left and to the right. We need help and there's nobody in sight. Where is the man that we all need? Well tell him he's to come and rescue me. Ken is the man that we all need. Ken is the leader of the GLC."
The track also describes Livingstone as "a sex machine".

This isn't wrong, but it doesn't really make much sense in the context of something she actually said about a politician - the Ken song was a soundtrack to an imaginary Hollywood movie about the GLC and part of that framing. If you really wanted to make something relevant out of it, you might have mentioned how both the movie and the satire gleefully cast Thatcher as the villain of the piece, and the gender politics around the last female Prime Minister. But I suppose 'has she written a song about a politician' was the only box they were looking to tick.

Bookmarks: Protest songs

Oh, Edwyn Collins, you might believe there's not enough protest songs, but Tim Worthington is disproving you all over town with his guide to ten of most ineffectual protest songs of all time. It somehow misses off Back To The Planet's Please Don't Fight, but does corral everyone from Bill Oddie to Bros:

Matt and Luke attempt to reverse their Dumper-wards trajectory with an impassioned gospel-inflected ecological plea delivered to some bloke eating crisps, warning that there will be no birds up in the sky unless 'we' stop 'it' now. Presumably the minor landslide of vinyl, cassettes, 'Postermags', badges, t-shirts, leather jackets, pilfered bottle tops and Summer Specials containing bizarre text stories about kidnappers plotting to hold Matt to ransom in 'our 'oliday 'ome' that they had left in their wake did not constitute part of the 'it'.

Cameron might torpedo Glastonbury houses

There's a shortage of affordable homes in the country. So it's brilliant that Michael Eavis is going to release a parcel of land in Pilton for a number of small homes-to-rent in the corner of the village.

Except now he might not. These new homes, and a number that have been built previously, are threatened by Tory right-to-buy policy:

[There is] a proposal to name 10 new cottages in Pilton after Margaret Bondfield, a trade unionist and Labour MP who in 1929 became the nation’s first woman Cabinet Minister.

Except the cottages may never be built, victims of the ­pernicious Tory plan to nationalise housing association properties and flog them at discounts of up to £77,000 or £102,700 in London.

I’m told Eavis isn’t prepared to release land if it could end up in private hands a few years later at a fat profit.

Understandably so. I say "understandably", although it's not clear that the government really understands.

Charlotte Church: "Woman has accountant" shocker

Let's turn to Guido Fawkes. Guido persists in using his pseudonym as if we don't know he's Paul Staines, like a crap unmasked superhero still booking hotel rooms as "QTipMan" even although the receptionists always reply "okay, Mr. Staines, that's booked for you now." And he's managed to parlay his blog into a column in the News Of The World - the paper which still uses the pseudonym The Sun On Sunday. It's from this let's pretend world that he's tried to attack Charlotte Church following her appearance at the anti-austerity march yesterday.

Staines lives up to his chosen pseudonym, of course. Much as Fawkes was a dupe who got to do the dirty work of richer, more powerful types and ended up looking like a nasty piece of work, so too Staines trots out an attack line to try and deflect criticism of the government.

His problem with Church? Why, she calls for closing of tax loopholes, and yet... sorry, what was the pisspoor attack line again?

After joining the People’s Assembly against Austerity – whose aims include ‘increasing taxes on the super-rich’ and ‘closing tax loopholes’ – perhaps the Cardiff crooner turned campaigner should look at her own economy.

Church is the director of five companies that are all registered to the London address of Thomas Harris Accountants.

“Lowering and deferring tax is, of course, a key aim” boasts the firm’s website, by “taking advantage of allowances and reliefs of which many people are unaware.”

I don't think that there's a single major accountant which doesn't offer to minimise tax for its clients, and I don't think there's anyone who has a company that doesn't require some sort of accountancy service. So, really, this is on a par with going "well, David Attenborough calls for a reduction in fossil fuel use, but he has a car which uses petrol."

If Forkstaines has something solid - Church deliberately booking gigs in Bratislava for tax write-offs; a massive scheme to use foxes to channel cash through Nutwood; something like that - maybe there's a story there. But going 'oh, she wants tax loopholes closed and yet she has someone do her taxes for her who knows tax law' is weak, even from someone who clings to an outdated pseudonym.

A letter to The Guardian, illustrated

Catatonia, 1999:

Storm the palace

You can stick you obe
I'll sort out your bad Feng Shui
'Cos tourism is congestion
Tourism is congestion

Cerys Matthews, 2014:

"Sorry, did I say stick you OBE? I meant stick your MBE on my lapel. And I literally meant I'd sort out your bad feng shui - I've moved your animal statues into the money corners of the palace. Which is all of them. And now we can talk about a ticketing system to ease the congestion of tourism..."

Inspired by this letter from yesterday's Guardian:

Lovely photo of Cerys Matthews receiving her award at Buckingham Palace (Medal citizen, 22 November.) Would this be the same palace which we were urged to storm in the song on Catatonia’s album Equally Cursed and Blessed, the lyrics of which included the line “You can stick your OBE”?
Jim Naylon
Stonesfield, Oxfordshire

Legendobit: Jimmy Ruffin

Jimmy Ruffin has died.

Amongst his many other musical accomplishments, let's never forget that he took on Thatcher, on the side of the miners, when he joined Weller's Council Collective to raise funds for the strikers (while putting their side of the story):

(In obituaries this morning, the BBC is coyly describing this as "a charity single" rather than a political act.)

But this... this is what he'll be best remembered for:

Daily Mail & Dave apparently believes Hear'Say still a going concern

The funniest thing about Dave Cameron's embrace of Myleene Klass and her 'how can you punish me for being rich' special pleading - and the gurgling delight the Mail has shown - is that both seem convinced that Klass is still a pop star.

Hear'Say broke up on the 13th May, 2003 - so not pop for 11 years - and hasn't troubled the top 10 since 2002. So not a pop star for a dozen years.

What's strange is, if Dave had gone with the more accurate 'woman from the Littlewoods catalogue adverts', it would probably have had more sting.

Minaj: The Nazis were artistic nazis

The man who put together Nicki Minaj's nazi video has issued a statement:

Before I start, be clear that these are my personal views and not the views of Nicki Minaj, Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, or Young Money.

First, I’m not apologizing for my work, nor will I dodge the immediate question. The flags, armbands, and gas mask (and perhaps my use of symmetry?) are all representative of Nazism.

But a majority of the recognizable models/symbols are American: MQ9 Reaper Drone, F22 Raptor, Sidewinder missile, security cameras, M60, SWAT uniform, General’s uniform, the Supreme court, and the Lincoln Memorial. What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

Despite the fact heavy religious and economic themes were glossed over, there’s also Russian T-90 tanks, Belgian FN FAL, German mp5 (not manufactured until 1966), an Italian Ferrari, and a Vatican Pope.

As far as an explanation, I think its actually important to remind younger generations of atrocities that occurred in the past as a way to prevent them from happening in the future. And the most effective way of connecting with people today is through social media and pop culture. So if my work is misinterpreted because it’s not a sappy tearjerker, sorry I’m not sorry. What else is trending?

First of all: "Sorry not sorry"? Is it still 2012 in America?

Jeff Osborne, the artist who directed the “Only” lyric video, issued a statement via MySpace

Oh. I suppose if you're still using MySpace, "sorry not sorry" must seems as new and astonishing as the first time someone from Britain came face-to-face with kangaroo.

Still, it's nice to have that clarified. It's not about Nazi Nazis, it's just 'hey, aren't all regimes a little bit nazi-like, have you ever thought that OMG it's so obvious when you think about it and aren't CCTV cameras just jackboots attached to walls, right?' Nazis.

It's not unusual for Godwin's Law to apply in YouTube comments. There's more than a few piece-to-camera YouTube videos where it can be invoked. I think, though, this might be the first time Godwin can be pressed into service for a lyric video.

Hey, Jeff, here's one for you: why don't you take a picture of Obama, right, and put a little moustache on him? SEE IF PEOPLE CAN HANDLE THAT TRUTH.

98 Degrees to a name on the ballot?

Justin Jeffre is running for mayor of Cincinnati. Or at least thinking of it:

A former pop star says he wants to run for Cincinnati mayor [...]

Justin Jeffre of 98 degrees is a queen city native.

And what, you may wonder, is the main political question that is driving this interest in representing the people of the Queen City?

He's pitching the idea for VH1 to do a reality show on his mayoral campaign. The cable network is considering it.

Excuse me, I'll just be over here, trying to sob myself to death.

In 2011, Jeffre was arrested for his part in Occupy Cincinnati, so he does at least have some sort of record to campaign on. Other than his records.

Douglas Carswell invokes HMV to explain UKIP popularity

Douglas Carswell reckons the Tories are struggling because, effectively, they're HMV:

Douglas Carswell, who made history as the first elected Ukip MP last week, said he hoped more Tories joined him but insisted the party was "not the Conservative party in exile".

He likened the Tories to failed music store HMV. "The way the Tory party is retailing politics is like the way HMV retailed music. It's a defunct retail model," he said on the Andrew Marr show this morning.

Somewhere, David Cameron is punching the air and going "not Our Price. At least we're not Our Price."

Let's just leave aside the suggestion that retailing is a good metaphor for politics, because it's almost certainly depressingly true.

Carswell's wrong, of course. When it looked like HMV might vanish from the high streets of Britain, everyone thought that would be a bad thing.

Bez: Yougov had some time on its hands

With Bez (real name Bez Outofthehappymondays) planning a run for parliament in Salford, YouGov decided to ask people if they think he'd make a good MP.

It's not entirely clear why this was the criteria, as nobody ever votes for a glitzy celeb candidate on the basis of if they'd be any good at the job - otherwise Louise Mensch would not have become the ex-MP for Corby, never mind the actual MP for Corby.

Still, those were the criteria.

A new YouGov survey finds that, excluding those who don't know enough about Bez to say (43% of the total) or don't have an opinion (19%), 31% think he would make a good MP while 69% say he would make a bad one.

Bez might be worried by these figures, but there's an upside. Most people haven't got a clue who is or have an opinion about him; so the fact that those who do know him wouldn't let him within a country mile of the House of Commons isn't a major problem. There's a massive base of people who don't blink and say "what, the maracas guy?", which is room to build on.

And while barely half the world is aware of him or his work, that's not too bad: according to Pointless, nobody in the country remembers who George Osborne is, left to their own devices.

Crimean separatists get their own pop star support

You'll recall a couple of weeks back Eurovision winner Ruslana got a role in the new Ukraine government.

That doesn't mean that the entire world of Eastern European pop is supporting the smaller nation. Oleg Gazmanov, a Russian pop star, has appeared at a Moscow rally supporting the campaign to attach Crimea to Russia.

This is Oleg:

Looks more like one of those doctors who appear with their shirts off in airplane in-flight magazines: "Dr Smith is sixty but still takes his shirt off in magazines".

Oleg's official biography says that he likes his music to "unite people of different nationalities", although it turns out he's just as okay with that being done at gun point, too.

This is the song that Oleg performed at the rally, with what the uploader insists is an English translation of the lyric...

Gentleman Offices
Under the taut nerve chord of faith
I sing this song to those who give up careers
Life is not regretting his chest substituting for Russia her!

Those who survived in Afghanistn, his reputation did not make a muck of thsoe who did not make a career of Soldiers' blood.

I sing the offices who took pity mothers, returning them back to the living sons!

Officers, offices, you heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Gentlemen, Offices, both to save your faith?

Dug graves on your souls wheezing!
What are we brothers have done - could not save them, and now they are forever in my eyes we look!

Once again the guys go, dissolving into the sunset
Russia called them both happened more than once

And once you leave, may, directly at the sky, and from above forgive us!

So where are you going? May, directly at the sky and from above forgive us!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

I'm sure if you lobbed Paul Hardcastle's 19 into a machine translation it'd seem just as odd, but I really do love the way Oleg makes it clear that he's only endorsing the guns under the hearts of Officers (Russian), just in case there were any Officers (Polish), say, who were drawing strength from this.

Nice to see, by the way, that Russian popular TV not above forcing veterans of war into studios to provide a bit of backdrop for a musty old song.

Ruslana: from Eurovision to minister

So, as part of the turmoil in Ukraine, it looks like Ruslana might end up as a minister in the new government.

Not unprecedented for a Eurovision star to go on to join government, of course; Dana went on to become President of Ireland; Nana Mouskouri became an MEP and Bardo were junior ministers in the Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries during Thatcher's second term.

The Manics against the fascists

It doesn't seem to be any heightened sense of irony, and just plain-old ignorance, that led to the English Defence League using the Manics' If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next to promote one of their hatey-hate rumble marches.

Someone clearly didn't get as far as the "then I can shoot fascists" line when they came up with idea.

the NME claims at first that the Manics are taking "legal action" as a result, although further down the article the "legal action" starts to sound a bit watery:

A spokesperson for the Manics told NME that the band were "horrified" that their track was being used in the promo and that the label requested the video was taken down immediately.

Which is action, but hardly the full force of the law.

Yasiin Bey experiences force-feeding as Gitmo protest

The US government are currently force-feeding prisoners, during Ramadan, at a sort-of prison they're supposedly trying to close down.

In an attempt to try and show what that force-feeding means, Yasiin Bey - who used to work as Mos Def - has had a go at being on the wrong end of the process. It's not pretty.

On the night Hank Williams Jr went to town

Hank Williams Jr's bid to simultaneously paint himself as some sort of victim and out-Nugent Ted Nugent continues with a Rolling Stone interview, in which he proves himself to be as ill-informed as he is short-of-thinking. It turns out when he went on Fox News and laid in to Obama and Boehner for having a game of golf together - the comparison he made was Hitler golfing with Netanyahu - why, he was the one with whom we should sympathise:

[Rolling Stone] How do you think Fox twisted your words around?

[Williams] Uh, number one, it's 6:30 in the morning, and you're sitting there to talk about your daddy's CD that's out. You know, come on. There, again, I think they did a great favor. If you can't make an analogy of something like that … my daughter said, "Daddy are you in trouble?' and I told her, "Let me tell you something, baby girl, if I'm in trouble, we're all in trouble." And guess what? I was right. There have been a lot of articles about, "My God, this world today, you can't say anything." Although, if you're a pretty radical left-wing democrat, you can say anything you want to – "Death to George Bush!" and start stabbing a steak with a knife like Rahm Emmanuel – which is on record, by the way. Oh yeah

So by "twisting his words around", Williams means "asking him a question in the morning". You wonder what time of day he stops appearing to be a right-wing conspiracy nut. Perhaps if it was 10am, he'd have gone with a 'like a lamb frolicking with a lion' analogy.

Oh, and the story "on the record" about Emmanuel? Never happened. There is a record of Emmanuel stabbing steaks and shouting names, but 'death to George Bush' is something of a stretch.

But is it even worth treating Williams with the sort of respect where you listen to his views as if they were informed and rational?

[RS]:Yeah, but when you talk about your Christian name …

[HWJr]:You know, we've got a President that does a call to the Koran or Mecca or whatever. That's what I meant. That's exactly what I meant. I won't be changing my name to whatever. That's exactly what I meant.

Jesus, man (no pun intended), if you're going to be the sort of numbskull who believes that Obama is a Muslim, and think that it matters anyway, at least try and give the impression you know something about Islam.

Hank Williams Junior then goes on to claim that Obama "hates America" which is proved by Obama's world tour where he went around apologising for the nation - no, me neither.

It's a nice piece by Rolling Stone - it's not even a case of giving enough rope for him to hang himself; Williams turns up with his own ready-to-go gibbet. I fear what's frightening, though, isn't the fundamentally ignorant people like Williams who have a platform; it's the large numbers of people who respect him and will assume he knows what he's talking about.

Oh, America.

John Lydon is fond of Newt

I think we're many years past the point where John Lydon saying warm things about Newt Gingrich has any power to raise more than a murmur, but his reasoning is quite interesting:

I've had great pleasure meeting the likes of Newt Gingrich and having a chat with the fellow on a staircase. I found him completely dishonest and totally likeable, because he doesn't care! He knows what a politician is, and he's a perfect embodiment of one.

Saying anything to keep the log rolling? I wonder why Lydon found such a position to be so understandable, eh?

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Protest pop

Fennerpearson offers a thoughtful post about about mixing pop and politics:

Chris’s view was that the pop song – and, to cut a long argument short, [the PJ Harvey album] *is* a pop album – was not the right vehicle to discuss war. Although Chris is a headmaster now, he was once an English teacher, so – impressed by my own improvisation – I riposted with the world war one poets. It transpires, however, that they *agonised* over whether it was appropriate to record the horrors of war in a contrived form.