Independent Sources has already written quite a bit on the Live 8 concerts. With the concerts now completed, we feel compelled to write one more posting—think of it as an obituary. First off, we would like to admit that we were wrong. We had said that the Live 8 concerts would be fun to watch but in the end wouldn’t do much. We were half right, they won’t do much. What we hadn’t counted on, however, was MTV’s dismal coverage of the shows.

Los Angeles Times rock critic Robert Hilburn had this to say about the TV’s coverage:

It was pitiful….Add “pathetic” to the list.

Hilburn further commented that the MTV coverage was met with howls from the Los Angeles Times newsroon and cited as an example their cutting away from the much-awaited reunion of Pink Floyd to hear mindless chatter from the MTV hosts about “golly-gee” how exciting it was to have these acts on stage.

So the music world wasn’t wowed, how about the politics?

Wesley Pruden in The Washington Times  remarked on the self-appointed importance given the event by its participants:

• “This is the greatest rock show in the history of the world,” cried the announcer at the London concert.
• “This is the single most important concert ever,” gushed a disc jockey on XM Satellite Radio:
• “This is the greatest thing that’s ever been in the entire history of the world.” shouted one of the musicians of Coldplay.

Pruden continued:

But this week the grown-ups take over, as grown-ups always must, when the G-8 economic summit commences in Scotland under the baton of Tony Blair, who not only wants to eliminate African poverty but to end global warming before Christmas.

The nations of the West must do something to ease the brutal pain of generations of unbridled greed, ignorant incompetence and rabid corruption in Africa. It’s our Christian duty. But it will require discipline that is out of fashion in the 21st century, and it certainly isn’t what the simple-minded noisemakers of Live 8 had in mind.

The example of Nigeria says it all. Figures released last month by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, as reported in the London Daily Telegraph, reveal that in the 45 years since Britain granted independence in 1960 a succession of despots squandered $387 billion (that’s a “b,” not an “m”), almost to the dollar the sum of all Western aid to all of Africa between 1960 and 1997. One of the despots, Gen. Sani Abacha, now safely dead, is believed to have looted Nigeria’s vast oil reserves of more than $5 billion in just five years.

William Bellamy, the U.S. ambassador to neighboring Kenya, startled the guests at his Fourth of July garden party yesterday with just the kind of bluntness needed to keep African aid in realistic perspective. “Turning on the fire hose of international compassion and asking Kenya and other African nations to drink from it is not a serious strategy for promoting growth or ending poverty.”

Nobody has, unfortunately, and that’s exactly why aid for Africa is as close to hopeless as anything can be. Regime change all across the continent is sorely needed, even more than another concert by unemployed service-station attendants whanging away on electric guitars and other noisemakers.
Tony Blair’s No. 2 man, George Brown, talks giddily of a Marshall Plan for Africa, but Nigerian despots alone have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. George C. Marshall’s miracle scheme for rebuilding Europe worked because mature European leadership was determined to rescue the continent from the ravages of World War II.

Live 8 concerts are nice, and the photographs of starving children will break the coldest heart, but unless Europe and the West accompany aid with the kind of supervision nobody has the courage to impose, the aid will wind up in the usual Swiss banks, and 20 years from now another generation of children will die while naive hearts bleed.

One thing that should not be lost in all of this however is a story that doesn’t get reported since it is overshadowed by music played and the actual G-8 conferences. The real and perhaps most important acheivement of the concerts is the outlet that these concerts give major recording artists to feel good about themselves. One can easily imagine Madonna second guessing her values after giving her child a $10,000 limit credit card or rap acts pausing for a moment after recognizing that the “bling bling” around there necks could probably feed a village for a decade. However, in one glorious day, all of all of those feelings get flushed away and they regain the moral highground they so relish without having to change their lives one iota. Bet Michael Jackson wishes he could do that. Maybe next time.

And for that, we at Independent Sources salute you!

Additional reading: Live 8 vs. Farm Aid, and LA Times’ Answer to African Famine: Country Music? Want to read about a previous star-studded concert that did nothing, let’s not forget No Nukes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 1:03 am by Insider and is filed under Media, Politically Correct ... and stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.