The Clinton Thing—By PJ
Uncredited photo of Bono and Edge with the Clintons from U2’s Instagram (August 20, 2023), cropped and manipulated on Photomosh.
The Clinton Thing
PJ DeGenaro
When this post popped up on instagram, I had a quick laugh and commented that U2’s social media gremlins needed to learn how to crop photos and to write copy that actually sounded like U2. That comment got 40 likes, which may not be much but is pretty unusual for me.
So I had a look at the comments around it, and I hastily deleted my own lest I give anyone the impression that I have a problem with any of the Clintons — which I do not.
But U2, you are guilty. You are guilty of believing that anything resembling good will or basic historical knowledge is out there on the internet. I don’t know who is running your social media accounts, but as someone who has handled communications for a public figure, I know that you can’t just post any old picture of Bono and Bill Clinton and not get inundated with paranoiac ravings about “Epstein’s plane” and the always hilarious “stay out of politics and stick to music.”
You have to say more. You have to say, in one or two sentences that will fit in a tweet, what Bill Clinton actually did for Ireland.
You must stop worrying about accusations of speechifying. People out there either don’t remember or never knew the key role that the Clinton Administration played in the Irish peace process of the 1990s, which led to the Good Friday Agreement. They’ve probably never heard of George Mitchell, the former senator sent by President Clinton to assist with negotiations between the key players. If they read Surrender at all, they skipped over that whole “activism” section. And they probably didn’t understand the season two finale of Derry Girls, either.
Look, I didn’t love (and still don’t love) seeing Bono pose for pictures with George W. Bush. I did read the section of Surrender that led to the creation of PEPFAR, and I was absolutely incensed at the emotional blackmail the Bush Administration put Bono through in order to secure that funding. Apart from the people who were actually dying from lack of access to inexpensive medication, Bono had the most to lose — the trust of his fellow activists, and his band.
Real U2 fans know that U2 will make us uncomfortable from time to time. But I had hoped that real U2 fans were smart enough not to get sucked into the cesspool of propaganda and disinformation that leads people to praise dictators and revile defenders of democracy, or to think their “freedom” is at stake because they’re asked to get a vaccine during a pandemic, or to threaten educators and librarians into banning books about same-sex penguin couples.
A lot of us seem to be headed down that road. We should consider pulling over for a minute.