In Praise of Sir Bob

Earlier today, I saw a "news" story which purported to be about a group of African musicians who decided to record a response to the charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band-Aid. The African musicians apparently said they hoped that their somewhat belated response to the 1984 single, entitled "Yes We Do", would free up Band-Aid's leading figure Bob Geldof to concentrate on a variety of more current concerns such as the following...

“Like Do they know about climate change in America? Or did Kim Jong-il have time to write down the abort codes for the nukes before he died? Or perhaps he can revert to the time-honoured classic – ‘Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.”

While the item was most likely a joke, it ties into an ongoing - and rather under-informed - strain of discussion about the song and the relief efforts related to it. While I personally like "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and see it as a continuing reminder of how fortunate we are in America and Europe, I appreciate why some people don't like it. What I don't like, however, are cheap shots which try to portray Geldof as some kind of clueless dilettante who did the song to soothe his conscience and walked away. To put it mildly, that view betrays a remarkable ignorance of the facts.

More than 25 years after the Live-Aid concert, the Band-Aid Trust continues to do significant relief work in Africa. More to the point, Geldof always recognized that the money generated by the song was no more than a "band-aid" on a larger problem and thus has taken the time to understand the impact of broader issues like debt-relief on the prospects for long-term prosperity and self-sufficiency among African nations. In recent years, Geldof has been among the most vocal non-politicians lobbying world governments to address these problems.

Some might observe here that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. Others may prefer to comment on the relative merits of walking the walk as opposed to merely talking the talk. Either way, most individuals have a ways to go before they can say they've done as much as Geldof has to help people in Africa.