In a recent comment Matt pointed me to a blog post by theologian and pastor Greg Boyd in which he endorses Bono’s Product (RED) campaign. In his post Boyd asserts, “It seems to me that the One Campaign, which includes Product (RED), is one of the most beautiful and powerful Kingdom movements being carried out right now.” Boyd suggests that God is using Bono to show the church what it ought to be doing. According to Boyd, “Our job is to manifest God’s love by using our God-given time, talent and resources to serve the world. See a need and meet it with your gifts.” I’m sure most everyone is familiar with the Product (RED) campaign, but if you’re not familiar with it you can watch Bono and Bill Gates talk about it here and you can watch one of their awful commercials aired during the Super Bowl here. I’ve also written on this particular issue before and have argued that Bono actually hurts poor children here. And, if you’re looking for laugh about this particular topic watch this.
In a nut shell, Product (RED) is a campaign put on by Bono and sponsored by major transnational corporations to help people in Africa who are living in poverty and dying of HIV/AIDS. The idea is that if you buy specific products that are (RED) products from major corporations like Reebok, GAP, Apple, and more recently Dell Computers, then a portion of the money from your purchase will go to Africa to help dying people. So, it is what the corporate cats call creative capitalism. Essentially, it is a way to get Americans to help some poor people by exploiting what Americans already do best: buy and consume. It is a method of helping others that does not demand any sacrifice. It is a way to make everyone “happy.” Americans get what they want: more stuff; corporations get what they want: more consumers; and the poor people dying of AIDS in Africa get what they want: health and wealth. Everyone gets what they want, right? Of course, it would be naïve to think that these major transnational corporations are actually concerned about the poor. But you see that is the whole point of the thing, it is a way to “do justice” while maintaining our own self-interest. In some ways it is just another way for Americans to shut out the reality of poverty (which reveals to us the reality of our own inevitable death) from our lives. We don’t want to see poor people, so we do what both liberals and conservatives in America have always done: try to find some way out of actually loving and caring for the poor.
What Boyd loves about Bono’s campaign is that he “didn’t rely on government to address these issues. He just did it.” In the context of Boyd’s anarchist-leaning theology this is seen as something good, for Bono didn’t capitulate to the secular “sword,” that is government. However, as Slavoj Zizek correctly points out, “Today it is the great capitalists - Bill Gates, corporate polluters, fox hunters – who ‘resist’ the state.” And, indeed, global capitalism wields one hell of a bloody sword. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for Christian resistance to the state, but not if this means grabbing a hold of the market to change the world. Boyd’s insistence that the church must detach itself from secular politics ought to apply to the global capitalist market as well, for similar reasons related to his concern about Christian allegiance. I’m sorry but I fail to see how the theological and moral issues raised in supporting global capitalist techniques of “ending poverty” fundamentally differ from supporting nation-state techniques.
If you watched this year’s Super Bowl then you probably remember seeing this commercial. Yet another illustration of why I despise Bono’s humanitarian work.
Oh, have mercy. Will it ever stop? I just found out about the U2charist.The U2charist is a very specific kind of Eucharist service started by the Episcopal church in which U2 songs are played during the celebration of the Eucharist. According to Wikipedia the U2charist “features the music of the rock band U2 and a message about God’s call to rally around the Millennium Development Goals.” Apparently the U2charist began a couple years ago to rally around Bono and his humanitarian efforts.Of course, I think that Christians should urge countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals, but does this mean holding a U2charist? I’m not a major “traditionalist” by any means, but everyone knows my disdain for Bono. If you haven’t heard read here and here. Okay three points: 1) A U2charist reflects how deep the wedge really is between our worship and our politics that we have to transform the Eucharist into a promotion for a social program. 2) The traditional Eucharist has been so privatized to the point where people don’t believe that it has any relevant social meaning. So, we need something like U2 to spruce it up and make it relevant to the world.3) The name U2charist just makes me sick. I don’t know. What do people think about this? Am I too cynical? Is this a helpful way to get people to connect worship with politics? Is the Eucharist as it is so socially irrelevant?
Many of you know my disdain for the work of U2’s front man, Bono. Some of you think I’m just a little too cynical and can’t follow me on this point. To clarify, it was never my intention to highlight Bono in particular, but all at once a few years back, so many people started forwarding me his “prayer” in front of Bush and his great humanitarian work on behalf of people suffering from AIDS in Africa. In the wake of hurricane Katrina and the disasterous response of the US, I wrote a song that had chorus that began like this: “my country doesn’t give a sh** about New Orleans…” In the song I not so implicitly critique Bono’s Product RED campaign. I attempt to bring to light the irony of so-called humanitarian work that is built on cooperation with corporations like the Gap and Reebok. The campaign went something like this: if people buy RED Gap products (or Reebok,etc.), Gap will give X amount of dollars to help alleviate the AIDS epidemic in Africa. To me and I’m sure others, it was obvious that these corporations were simply taking advantage of Bono. When the Product RED campaign was first set into motion, Bono was at the peak of his career as a humanitarian; this was certainly a good marketing campaign for Gap and others. Ironically, many of the corporations had a history of accusations for human rights abuses.The reason why a raise this again is because I just came across an article in the UK’s Guardian which reveals that
“Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids…Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.”
The article goes on,
The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of beaded children’s blouses marked with serial numbers that Gap admitted corresponded with its own inventory. The company has pledged to convene a meeting of its Indian suppliers as well as withdrawing tens of thousands of the embroidered girl’s blouses from the market, before they reach the stores
The Guardian even mentions the Gap’s connection with the Product RED campaign,
With endorsements from celebrities including Madonna, Lenny Kravitz and Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has become one of the most successful and iconic brands in fashion. Last year the firm embarked on a huge poster and TV campaign surrounding Product Red, a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 lead singer Bono.
Of course, the Gap was totally unaware that they had been outsourcing manufacturing jobs to the children of India, and they promise to fully investigate and close down all such factories. Give me a break! Unaware? Sure.I hope this article serves to highlight my concerns with Product RED and Bono’s humanitarian efforts. If one responds by saying that Bono had good intentions, I would reply by calling him utterly naive to think that these companies supported healthy work environments.
