I Can Forgive U2 Singer Bono for Tax Dodge but Not His Hypocrisy

Bono

I can forgive U2 singer Bono for tax dodge but not his hypocrisy — after the star was exposed in the Paradise Papers data leak.

With luck, other dreadful celebrities thinking of doing the same thing will learn a lesson from this scandal.

If the greatest pop music is the most personal, then Bono’s next U2 album should be a cracker.

He will no doubt write about something close to his heart — avoiding tax.

As always, the humble Irishman will be keeping it real by telling a story we can all relate to.

It’s about an ordinary guy, born Paul Hewson, best friend of popes, prime ministers and presidents, and his heroic mission to save the world and his near-billion dollar fortune by sheltering it in ingenious offshore accounting schemes including a shopping centre in Lithuania, bought via low-tax Malta.

Bono is one of the celebrities exposed in the Paradise Papers data leak. Like last year’s Panama Papers, it involves the release of private documents detailing some of the tax avoidance schemes used by the rich and powerful.

Read the rest in the Sun.

No One Likes Al Gore’s New Movie

Al Gore
Kevin Hagen/Getty Images

Al Gore’s new movie – An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power – is going down with audiences like a cup of cold sick.

It has bombed at the box office:

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which follows the ex-VP’s continuing attempts to raise awareness of global warming, made $900,000 across 180 screens on the weekend of August 4-6, according to Box Office Mojo.

But the original made $1,356,387 across just 77 screens at the same point in its run in 2006, leaving Paramount’s confidence in the movie’s appeal looking misplaced.

(And this weekend was even worse…)

It has been slated by his (natural ally) the Guardian. “Desultory and surprisingly vainglorious”, says the two-star review.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Bono Suggests New Anti-Islamic State Strategy: ‘Send in Amy Schumer, Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen’

Firstly, the West needs to welcome in more refugees from North Africa and the Middle East – lots more – and learn to see them not as a “burden” but as a “benefit.”

Secondly, instead of confronting Islamist terror with the unhelpful language of hate and military hardware, it needs to find a kinder, gentler, funnier way of winning them over – using comedians like Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, and Sacha Baron Cohen.

Bono was delivering his wisdom to the Senate appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill.

He said:

“It’s like, you speak violence, you speak their language. But you laugh at them when they are goose-stepping down the street and it takes away their power. So I am suggesting that the Senate send in Amy Schumer and Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen, thank you.”

Amy Schumer and Sacha Baron Cohen are both Jewish – a faith to which ISIS (and Al Qaeda and Boko Haram et al) have not hitherto shown themselves to be particularly sympathetic. On the contrary last year ISIS announced that they were planning a Second Holocaust in which all the world’s Jews would be extinguished. Perhaps Bono is under the impression that Amy Schumer’s wit would grant her an exemption – though up and until now there has been little evidence that ISIS has much of a sense of humour.

Nor do Islamic terror groups respond terribly well to homosexuals like Bruno, the camp Austrian played by Baron Cohen; or even to people who look like they might be homosexuals, such as Borat, when he is wearing his mankini. Their preferred method of dealing with them – in accordance with their scriptures – is to throw them off high buildings or bury them beneath a wall.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

No, Salon – David Bowie Was Not Some Kind of Proto Bruce Jenner

No, Salon. This is quite incredibly boring of you, not to mention impertinent.

Obviously none of us can be sure what Bowie really wanted because he kept himself so beguilingly mysterious and opaque. But still, I’d hazard a guess that one of the things he definitely didn’t wish to be trivialised as when he went to the great black star in the sky was as the long-hair/gay rights activist/all purpose gender bender who gave us – by Salon’s account – ‘”that liberating feeling, the first time you realize that the right response to “Not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” is, “Who cares?”’
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The glory of David Bowie is that he was nobody’s bitch. He didn’t want to become a creature of the Establishment, which is why he resisted such baubles as the CBE (Companion of the British Empire) and a knighthood (unlike one or two less principled anti-establishment rock heroes we could mention, eh, Sir Mick?). But nor did he wish to become a creature of the counter culture, which is why, unlike the tedious Bono, he tended not to issue lofty pronouncements on political issues.

Read the rest at Breitbart.