Pet Shop Boys

U2 and the power of creative dissent

So my writing about All Along The Watchtower is taking me down Bonoville. Prepare yourselves for some fangirling.

I don't remember when I fell in love with U2. All I know is that by the time I hooked up with the father of my children, I already was a rabid fan of the quartet.

The 1980s were not just about corporate greed and yuppies. The height of the war of independence was happening in Ireland with bombings everywhere by the IRA. In Spain ETA was not to be left behind. Central America was covered in the blood of the Iran-Contra war. And in Puerto Rico we had the FALN.

I came to take as "normal" a bombing or two of federal buildings or army equipment at least every 3 months. And there was the molotov coktailing of the paramilitary forces of the island whenever there was a political demonstration. By the time I had made the decision to come to the United States, I ironically made it because I felt that being in the belly of the beast would spare me of the violence and craziness. I really wanted to be as far away of all things political as possible.

Of course, if you are a fan of U2, that's absolutely impossible.



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Words to live by

What distinguished [Mr. McCain's] posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male.

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.


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