After the jump, more exhibits of hoaxes and hatin' on U2.

Their newest take on the ordeal is an a cappella version of the song that started it all, from the brilliant CD 180 D'G's to the Future: The Music of Negativland as Performed by the 180 G's, included with the Our Favorite Things DVD. Let's call it Exhibit A.

Negativland is U2's Green Goblin, and have documented well their legal and public battles with the fightin' Irish band. What began as a trademark infringement suit against Negativland for using the "U2" name on a single resulted in the best publicity the band could have dreamed of (if a tough battle for them). A book (FAIR USE: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2) and a later CD (These Guys Are From England And Who Gives a Shit) document in text and audio the war. (Negativland's Mark Hosler laid out the whole story at the New School in New York in 2006. You can hear the talk right here on this very blog.)

Reviews of the new film U2:3D have made it sound really cool. There's only one reason I can't bring myself to go: having to sit through 85 minutes of U2 music. Yeah, I know, hating on U2 isn't the most daring stand a fella can make. The band's list of nonfans includes Negativland, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and at least some of the good people of Africa and Scotland. And Michaelangelo Matos, who wrote that they "were precisely as full of clumsy rhetoric and/or shit as the Jefferson Airplane had been and therefore 'cared.'"

Exhibit B

Bono was present for a conference in Tanzania in June 2007, the upshot of which was that Africa needs investment, not aid. This report comes from the online magazine The American.

After his impassioned defense of aid, an African man in the audience asked Bono, "Where do you place the African person as a thinker, a creator of wealth?"

Visibly wounded by the question, confused how anyone could misinterpret his good intentions, Bono, like the proverbial white man with black friends, set out to prove how down he is with the black man.

Africans are the "most regal people on earth" and music is their DNA, he told the room of mostly doctors, engineers, and businessmen. He then began singing a traditional Irish dirge to show us how Celtic music has Coptic roots, and so is fundamentally African. I wasn't the only one giggling in the back row.

Bono, in his awkward defense of his "Africa credo," also represents our fundamental failure to listen.

Aid can alleviate immediate misery and that is why we love it. Charity is a profoundly human response to all those images that pull on our heartstrings. But all evidence points to the maddening conclusion that, in the long run, aid not only has no positive effect on economic growth, it may even undermine it.

The only way Africa will develop and create wealth is if it can attract foreign capital and trade its goods on the world market like every other economically successful country does.

But investors are jittery. And considering what we think we know about Africa, who would blame them?

Exhibit B

That same month, Bono attended the G8 summit in Germany, where he was snubbed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said "Meeting celebrities isn't my schtick." Bono had made several requests to meet with Harper during the conference.

Exhibit C

In October, 2006, Counterpunch reported on a particularly nice adaptation of an old chestnut.

A Plea to U2 from Africa's Children Stop Bono Before He Kills Again!

By CounterPunch News Service Bono is at a U2 concert in Glasgow when he asks the audience for some quiet. Then in the silence, he starts to slowly clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he says softly and seriously

into the microphone ... "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies......" A voice from near the front pierces the silence: "Well, fucken' stop

doin' it then!"



Exhibit D

The previous October, CNN's The Situation Room reported that U2 was going to play at a campaign fundraiser for Sen. Rick Santorum. (savvy readers will remember Santorum from another spectacle of righteous indignation). Media Matters reported:

On the October 11 edition 2005 of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN correspondent Ali Velshi reported as fact an Internet rumor that the rock band U2 was "set to perform in Philadelphia on Sunday at a $1,000-a-seat fund-raiser for Sen. Rick Santorum's [R-PA] re-election campaign." Velshi's report -- which contained wording similar to that in a false October 10 article on the conservative website NewsMax -- cited a claim by the "organizer of the fund-raiser" that both Santorum and U2 lead singer Bono "have strong religious convictions and are passionate in their beliefs" as an explanation for Bono's "new and perhaps surprising cause." Additionally, in a teaser for the report, anchor Kyra Phillips appeared to parrot NewsMax when she asked, "Why is U2's Bono teaming up with a conservative Republican senator?" Though Velshi later acknowledged that he had been "hoaxed," his retraction did not reference NewsMax, the event's "organizer," or any other possible source for his false report.

Exhibit E

On May 21, 2005, public scene-causers Improv Everywhere (best known for their annual pantless subway rides) staged a fake U2 concert on a rooftop near Madison Square Garden on the afternoon of the group's concert. The stunt ranked number 23 on VH1's "40 Greatest Pranks.

Ancillary Evidence

A poster named SadIrishEyes76 was writing fake U2 posts on Wikipedia in January. He created entries for albums called Blindness and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (Assembly Edition), as well as the band's Annihilation Tour. Unfortunately they were gone before I saw them (anyone who knows more, please post in the comments section).

Clinton McClung has done some laudable work on this very blog, including the heartwrenching cover of "One" performed by Bank of America brass celebrating their merger with MBNA in 2006, and the subsequent legal threats after a video was leaked. The YouTube clip has been removed, but check the Quicktime link. Mr. McClung also provided documentation of Hotlanta Artiste DeAundra Peek's cover of "Mysterious Ways."

Summary

In fairness, any entertainer who takes political positions opens him or herself up ridicule. But it's not Bono's politics that make him so despicable. It's the fact that he and his band of strident men have been on the same earnest and chorus-drenched march for three decades. When's the last time you heard somebody say "Hey, I really like the new U2 song." I mean, do they make good songs? But I shouldn't be so harsh. I'll no doubt be eating my words once the Spiderman musical comes out. It's being directed by Julie Taymor, who put Bono in her Beatles movie, so it's a guaranteed hit.

Until then, we have the 3D movie. Maybe if I get some of those Bose noise-canceling headphones, I could go to the movie and just listen to my iPod. On second thought, maybe I'll just charge it up and go for a walk.