by Rootsie
Okay. What do George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton, Madonna, Condoleeza Rice, Barak Obama, Muhammed Ali, Jay-Zee, George W. Bush, Iman, Alicia Keys, Maya Angelou, Warren Buffet, Chris Rock, Queen Rania of Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Don Cheadle, Djimon Hounsou, Bill and Melinda Gates, Desmond Tutu, and Bono have in common?
They were all photographed by Annie Leibowitz for alternative covers of July’s
Vanity Fair magazine, which took the unprecedented step of having Bono guest-edit this issue about, you guessed it, Africa. The problem of Africa after all calls for extreme measures. In Bono’s learned opinion, the people pictured are those who have done the most for Africa. Whatever. But where is Angelina? On tour with Paul Wolfowitz or something? This troubles me.
Disclaimer: I don’t want anybody thinking I bought the thing. We check out the dumpster at our local Borders on Sunday mornings, having discovered they engage in the very un-green practice of ripping the covers off their out-of-date magazines and throwing them in the garbage.
There’s an article on the Mitochondrial DNA mapping of our (quite recent) human exodus out of Africa. Good enough. Except for an unfortunate ending: “We are all alive today because of what happened to a small group of hungry Africans around 50,000 years ago.” The ever-present
hungry Africans, who seem to passively allow things to
happen to them. I think that’s a weird way to describe a global migration of Africans who established permanent populations from Mongolia all the way to the British Isles in less than 3,000 years.
There is an article about contemporary African literature, which includes the magazine's only references to colonialism, since so many African writers happen to be freedom-fighters, and one about a musical tour of Mali led by…Jimmy Buffet. Well…okay…
Intrepid bush pilots in DR Congo. The indomitable Cote D’Ivoire football team. Surfing in South Africa. The relative ‘okayness’ of Kenya. Bill Clinton’s testimonial to Mandela. Brad Pitt’s interview with Desmond Tutu…
Brad Pitt? 71 Africans ‘making a difference’, some greats among them. This is the liberal press, after all.
Tutu makes sensible remarks about inequalities in trade, and none of these articles is particularly offensive, except inherently, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Of course it doesn’t end there, no siree.
Vanity Fair is a tarted-up People magazine, based in New York and directed to East Coast intelligentsia-types who like celebrity trash, mixed in with a few high-brow profiles of artists and such to keep up the pretense. Lots of gloss, toney ads, that kind of thing. This issue features among the ads a few startlingly beautiful, nearly naked African women, but in general, they are bizarrely dissonant with this month’s humanitarian theme. Louis Vuitton. Dolce and Gabbana, featuring a tanned, James Bond-type, legs splayed, lying in a white speedo on an air mattress in a Greek grotto or something. Mercedes and Lexus. Chanel. Pravda Vodka. The good life, nouveau riche white-folks’-style.
In recent years, the magazine has included a few ‘heavy’ political articles each month, sort of a “what every educated tourist needs to know about the world” type-of-thing, posing as hard-hitting journalism.
I do remember a good Norman Mailer article a few years back: a profile of Timothy McVeigh which disabuses anybody who cares of the idea that he was some Aryan Nation nut-job. But of course Mailer and Truman Capote are the New York literati famous for their long-time fascination with serial killers, which falls well within
VF’s typical purview.
The feature ‘political’ articles are a Sebastian Junger piece on the scary spectre of China’s interest in Africa; another on Tunisia’s attempts to resist Islamists written by that pro-war, pro-Bush Trot, Christopher Hitchens, who manages to laud Tunisia at the same time as he disparages its ‘anti-democratic’ tendencies; and the
piece de resistance, a profile of neo-lib economic guru Jeffrey Sachs (aka Dr. Shock), and his ‘vision’ for Africa, which, with help from his benefactor George Soros, he is busily trying to carry out. Sachs is described here as a “visionary economist, savior of Bolivia, Poland, and other struggling nations.” Gee, that must surprise the Bolivians. Among other struggling nations he worked his magic on were Russia and Argentina, whose economies barely survived their ‘shock therapy’: i.e. rapid, total privatization, i.e. selling every resource and infrastructure component off to the highest corporate bidder. Naturally, this is what he has in mind for Africa too, though the article does not discuss this, focusing instead rather fuzzily on Sachs’ attempts to ‘make life better’ for some Soros-sponsored ‘Milennium Villages’ in Uganda, trying to convince an unflatteringly-portrayed President Museveni, who has seen them come and go, that he holds the answer to his country’s ills. The article implies of course that ‘corrupt’ leaders like Museveni are the real ‘problem.’ As for results so far, according to the article, Sachs has managed to addict some thousands of Africans to U.S. food aid, and wrested a few infrastructure-improvement projects from the World Bank/IMF, which is historically reluctant to have its money used to actually build a school or hospital, God forbid.
Much to my relief, Angelina makes a cameo when mention is made of “MTV’s masterful documentary”
The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa. She calls him “one of the smartest people in the world.” There is one small picture of her on some august panel
tete a tete with Dr. Sachs. There is also a three-page-ad for Glaceau Vitamin Water featuring an exquisite, airbrushed, Jennifer Anniston. It is easy to see where
VF’s sympathies lie on the whole Brad/Jen/Angie thing.
Sachs is also referred to as “Bono’s Guru.”
Graydon Carter,
VF’s editor-in chief, tells us in his introduction to the issue, ”Interestingly, in what is now Ghana, there was once a mini-empire called Bono, ruled by kings called Bonohene. Our Bonohene was a wonderful collaborator—quick, smart, generous to a fault, and always willing to laugh at himself.” Gee, thanks for the history lesson, dude. King Bono. Nice ring.
“Collaborator” indeed. Unwitting maybe, but Chief Bono and Angie and Brad…collaborators nonetheless. You would think that Bono might have figured it out in the wake of his and Geldoff’s musical efforts to sway the G-8. None of Bono’s pals in high places have the slightest intention of stopping their theft of Africa’s resources or bringing justice to trade, which would go far in stopping the catastrophe in DR Congo (which civil war was not mentioned in the article about the Indian bush pilots, by the way), and give Africa the opportunity to save her own self without help from these high-profile do-gooders.
Madonna knows her Malawi though. Seriously, should we give these people credit for their apparent desire to rise above their self-absorption and promote some form of ‘global consciousness’? I find something obscene and voyeuristic about white stars wrapping their glitz around Africa, making picking up African babies as fashionable as designer mini-dogs peeping out of Louis Vuitton bags. So what if Madonna’s and Guy’s new ‘son’ has a living breathing father back in Malawi who might have something to say about it? Maybe there’s something wrong with me: my class hatred, my deep cynicism. There’s lots wrong with me, in fact, especially in relation to Africa. I share the same arrogance and vanity with every white, and I had the true privilege of falling in with blacks who deigned to educate me about it. Like Einstein said, the same minds that created a problem can’t expect to be the ones who solve it. If we took care of our own garbage, Africa and the rest of the non-white world could see some daylight. You can’t skip from centuries of brutal colonialism and imperial slaughter to ‘we are the world’ lovey-dovey without a protracted period of some very ruthless self-examination. To me, these moves in regard to Africa are completely self-absorbed, and at root an end-run around addressing the pain that oppression visits on the oppressor. The best thing we can do is to shut up for a few hundred years. Won’t happen, I know. Maybe if serious reparations was a fad among the rich and famous, and Bill and Melinda gave every last cent of their billions beyond what they need to survive…
But Bono’s “Red” campaign is not charity, as he says. It’s a ‘business plan.’ This is nothing about sacrifice, or sharing the resources of the planet: it’s about holding all the cards. And being the ‘Deciders.’ Who gets saved this week. Who gets cut loose. Bono’s campaign is given plenty of play in the magazine, a 5-page Gap ad, a Moto Razor ad, and a 3-page “Red” ad urging us to “Be Good-Looking Samaritans,” and informing us that “Meaning is the New Luxury.” What on earth might that mean, speaking of meaning? Amusingly enough, there is a big fold-out ad for an exclusive community in Utah, “A Home for Generations, A Lifetime of Privilege.” It has a Native American name, Tuhaye. Lifetimes of privilege, rest assured. There are no black or Native American people in the accompanying photo-montage, enjoying the horseback-riding, skiing, fishing, golfing, or swimming in the pristeen mountain waters. Mostly blondes. All of these people presumably up to their eyeballs in meaning.
As for the blacks who participated in this strange exercise, I have no comment. I can’t pretend to know what motivates them, and frankly it is none of my business. Just as blacks have been compelled by history to feel a particular responsibility to other blacks, and engage in something like a public family conversation, I want to engage my fellow whites in a consideration of what racism has made of us, and whether we really want to
be that anymore.
I could go on for days about this thing, but there is one final article, the last in the magazine, which in some mysterious way says it all. It is an excerpt from Tina Brown’s new book about Princess Diana, and describes her post-marriage ‘new self’, including her trips to Africa to comfort children with AIDs and to walk in unswept minefields…really. Many pics of her showing off her legs in fabulous dresses, and in traditional Pakistani dress while insanely courting a Pakistani surgeon, and one, two pages wide, of a fragile woman in khakis and a flimsy transparent plastic helmet over her face walking down a path studded with lurid red “Danger” signs. I suppose Diana is included in the issue as a posthumous member of the “Save Africa” club. The sad story Brown tells demonstrates how pathetically incapable she was of saving herself.
Here are some articles that educated me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1503527,00.html“A Noose, Not a Bracelet” by Naomi Klein
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0415-30.htm“The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein
http://www.rootsie.com/blog/?p=1295“How to End the War” by Naomi Klein
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0311-24.htm“Can Democracy Survive Bush’s Embrace?” by Naomi Klein
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/08/140254“Salih Booker on Africa Debt: The Poorest Regions in the World Have Subsidized the Richest”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1505927,00.html“The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket” by George Monbiot
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