Professor William Easterly’s Attack on Bono using John Lennon’s Halo as a Club

12 December 2010

I probably should ignore Professor Easterly’s vent, but I can’t help myself in the face of his apparently nasty-minded exposure-seeking

Two days ago, Professor William Easterly — of New York University and author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good — slammed Bono for not sharing the rebellious opposition to the status quo that John Lennon displayed.

Using the anniversary of Lennon’s death, Easterly compared the two dissimilar men, who lived in culturally different times, by unfairly hammering one of them for not having the character or effect of the other:

[T]here is a fundamental difference between Lennon's activism and Bono's, and it underscores the sad evolution of celebrity activism in recent years.

Lennon was a rebel. Bono is not.

Lennon's protests against the war in Vietnam so threatened the U.S. government that he was hounded . . . . He was a moral crusader who challenged leaders whom he thought were doing wrong.

Bono, by contrast, has become a sort of celebrity policy expert, supporting specific technical solutions to global poverty.

He does not challenge power but rather embraces it; he is more likely to appear in photo ops with international political leaders - or to travel through Africa with a Treasury secretary - than he is to call them out in a meaningful way.

There is something inherently noble about the celebrity dissident, but there is something slightly ridiculous about the celebrity wonk. . . .

While Bono calls global poverty a moral wrong, he does not identify the wrongdoers. Instead, he buys into technocratic illusions about the issue without paying attention to who has power and who lacks it, who oppresses and who is oppressed. He runs with the crowd that believes ending poverty is a matter of technical expertise - doing things such as expanding food yields with nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants or solar-powered drip irrigation.

Dead icons are impossible to equal in the merit derby

I’ll make three points about using a halo to clobber a living person in this instance.

Comparing someone alive today to a dead icon is not fair. Unless one is deliberately trying to highlight the value of the icon’s perceived, rather than actual, contribution to history.

Icons become icons by (i) our attributions of generally inflated merit and (ii) our erasure of the controversial aspects of their character and work.

The John Lennon we remember is not identical to the one who lived. Today’s Bono is not the one who will be remembered.

It might be better to praise or criticize Bono, using Lennon’s light, only after both have been history for some time.

Second, John Lennon had a lot of popular support for his points of view. He was indeed admirable, but he was not the super rebel that Bono would have to be in order to take on the entirety of the world’s economic and political establishments.

Being a rebel against war is considerably easier, intellectually and morally, than:

(a) elucidating reasons why capitalism, subtle economic exploitation, and the prevailing economic institutions are bad

and

(b) explaining how those alleged evils can be realistically turned around, without completely circumventing humanity’s basic character.

Killing is spiritually condemned in most world religions. Getting economically ahead is mostly not.

Wars, historically, are demonstrably a bad idea, giving generally poor results. Economic exploitation, on the other hand, almost always gives one side marked benefits, at one time or another.

Consequently, it was motivationally and intellectually easier for John Lennon to rebel against the Vietnam War — especially given the popular support against the war that existed during the time — than it would be for Bono to crusade against economic evils that are profoundly less clear and for which there is demonstrably less support to change.

In short, Easterly makes a straw man argument.

Is Professor Easterly an intellectual who is jealous of celebrities?

In addition to making a straw man argument, Professor Easterly makes an inherently absurd statement in its support: “[T]here is something slightly ridiculous about the celebrity wonk.”

(i) Does Easterly think that celebrity people, who have done well in the race for wealth, are ridiculous because they try to recruit help for those who have not?

(ii) Is he arguing that celebrity status should require deep insight into the world’s problems, before fame and subsequent generosity are allowed to attach?

(iii) Or is he implying that “wonk-ness” should require a person to rebel against the status quo, before the wonk-i-ness title is bestowed?

Thought’s wind easily capsizes Easterly’s straw boat

One can weaken Easterly’s perspective regarding Bono by using an extreme example:

Does failing to be like Gandhi, President Lincoln, or Mother Theresa mean that (a) one is a ridiculous human being and (b) that one should (therefore) sit down and shut up about poverty and rampant illnesses around the world?

Criticizing Bono for taking only two of three difficult steps is dim-witted

Criticizing Bono for taking only two of three steps in a crusade to eradicate poverty is an odd way to begin the anti-poverty argument. Bono’s two steps, publicity and generosity, are obvious. Does avoiding or not seeing the third, challenging the oppressive status quo, mean that Bono is a rat?

Just because someone is not a rebel does not consign his efforts to improve humanity’s lot to the garbage bin. Even if those efforts inadvertently aid in hiding parts of the true problem.

If I give a homeless person $10, and he uses it on drugs or alcohol, am I at fault for (a) not having had the wit to foresee that he might do so and (b) not figuring out how to more effectively help him in the short time (or with the simple brain) that I had to make the decision?

Personal homelessness, at one end, and global poverty, on the other, are not, causally-speaking, simple problems to fix. Whatever Easterly thinks.

So Professor, don’t be so crassly graceless

If you’re going to slam Bono for not being an insight-filled genius, you might at least do so with an argument that exhibits the fairly-taken genius of your own insight. As written in the Washington Post, yours doesn’t. Your argument is needlessly offensive and intellectually beside the point.

At best, your essay observes that today’s celebrities are generally part of the status quo. And it would be nice if they weren’t.

Well, if celebrities weren’t part of the generalized human establishment, then they probably wouldn’t be celebrities. Nor would they have the wealth necessary to do what Bono is trying to do.

The moral?

Professor Easterly’s argument trashing Bono is most probably an attempt to ride on Bono’s fame in order to augment his own.

His essay is morally unseemly and intellectually vacuous.

PeteFree.com

Professor William Easterly’s Attack on Bono using John Lennon’s Halo as a Club