DAVID MARCUS: Memo to Bono: Please shut up and go away
I regret to inform you that Bono, the aging Irish pop star and front man for the band U2, is at it again, lecturing us poors as he always does. This time, it's about supposedly fascist efforts by the Trump administration to arrest and deport illegal immigrant criminals.
This week, the band, which hasn’t produced a relevant song since the invention of the iPod, released the single "American Obituary," meant to be a searing protest anthem against President Donald Trump, but actually a ditty just as flaccid as all of Bono’s mailed-in outrage-of-the-day efforts.
Take this profound line:
"Renee Good born to die free
American mother of three
Seventh day January
A bullet for еach child, you see"
Did it happen near a tree? Did she know how to ski? And does Dr. Seuss know that Bono is raiding his notebooks?
This prancing clown has taken an incredibly fraught and complicated situation in Minneapolis, where a federal agent shot and killed Good, and made it seem like murder. However, Bono doesn’t bother to mention that Good was hitting the officer with her car when she was shot.
Not exactly a minor detail.
BILL MAHER ROASTS BILLIE EILISH’S ANTI-ICE GRAMMYS SPEECH: ‘KNOWLEDGE’ MATTERS
No, instead of anything remotely resembling the truth, Bono is stoking anger in America at the behest of the billionaires who sign his checks, produce his musak, and hate Trump with the power of a thousand SpaceX launches.
Honestly, it has been enough. For 40 years Bono has parroted every lefty billionaire's cause, been wrong about most of them, flown around on private jets while complaining about carbon emissions and just generally been annoying.
At every Clinton Global Initiative Gala, there’s Bono. Every conference on global warming, every scam "feed the children" campaign run by the UN that mostly enriches African warlords, yep, there’s Bono.
JONATHAN TURLEY: 'SAY HER NAME' BECOMES RADICAL RALLYING CRY FOR DEMOCRATS' MOB RULE
It is not a stretch to say that Bono’s primary job and role in the universe for decades now has been to be the poster child of global liberalism, with all the smarmy smugness that comes with it.
He’s sure as hell not a contemporary musical artist in any meaningful sense of the word. People attend his shows to hear songs from the 1980s, not new releases.
Remember when Apple forced everyone to own the latest U2 album by having it automatically download on devices?
JIMMY FAILLA: BILLIE EILISH CRIES ‘STOLEN LAND’ — THEN GOES HOME TO HER $2.3M CALIFORNIA MANSION
That happened because nobody actually wanted the latest U2 album. If people wanted it, they would not have given it to us, they’d have made us buy it.
This tells us something very important about the incentive structures that exist for our celebrities, and perhaps, why so many of them, the vast majority, in fact, regularly spout off lefty talking points.
Compare the treatment of Bono to his Brit pop star contemporary Morrissey, whose upcoming album "Make-up Is A Lie" took years for any record label to release, even with extremely high demand, because it confronts Islamic terrorism and defends Western values.
HOLLYWOOD’S SELECTIVE SILENCE ON IRAN EXPOSES THE LIE OF CELEBRITY ACTIVISM
Morrissey has famously never bent the knee to the record industry when told what to say or when to shut up. Bono lives on that knee, lives off of that knee, and is likely too set in his ways to ever stand up again.
What message does this send to every musical performer, actor or filmmaker in the world? It says, "Push the progressive Soros agenda or else." You can be rich and famous or you can challenge the left’s holy truths, not both.
Bono is now trying to airlift in as Gen Z’s Bob Dylan, to be the toast of the campus protests and an important and significant musical artist again. But it's just so obvious that he is going through the motions with fake moral outrage and a new cheesy ballad.
PINS, PLATITUDES AND SILENCE: HOLLYWOOD’S HOLLOW RESPONSE TO RENEE GOOD
In the name of love, I am imploring Bono to just finally shut the hell up. We can all make our political judgments with or without you, and honestly, after decades of your puerile pontifications, the latter would be preferable.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
The protest music of the 1960s was important because it was organic. It was of a piece with the sounds of that culture itself. Bono’s neoliberal rehashing bears no resemblance to the fiery anger, the Palestinian flags, and the Black Bloc Antifa crews of 2026 anti-government agitation.
His song is nothing but a puff piece.
For whatever reason, for 40 years, Bono has been made the pope of pop culture, its moral arbiter and yardstick. He has always been terrible at it, and it is time for his tepid rule to end.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DAVID MARCUS