Canada and Other Matters of Opinion (4 page)

Make no mistake: Her Excellency gave a good speech. But it was made so much better by all the other speeches that our real leaders have not given.

Rick Hillier is more popular than Avril Lavigne. But let’s forget popularity, General Hillier owns a far less vaporous distinction. He is probably the most respected public figure in all the country.

It’s easy to be liked when nothing’s going on, and no big deal to be respected when things are calm and easy. General Hillier’s standing with the Canadian public comes, however, from his service as the head of Canada’s military, at a time when it is actively engaged in a still unresolved conflict, suffering the inevitable losses of real combat, in a war that claims far from universal support here in Canada. He has had what is arguably the most difficult and painful job—though for a true military man being a soldier is more of a vocation—of anyone in Canada, but from one coast to the other, from the north to the south, General Rick Hillier has earned almost universal respect and admiration.

The accomplishments of his tenure have a lot to do with this. He hauled the Canadian military out of the cellar of public opinion and from the bottom of every government’s list of real priorities. Within the military and without,
he refurbished its morale, bolstered its prestige. Other professions in this country are well esteemed. Soldiers are honoured.

Canada’s regard for its soldiers used to be manifested almost exclusively on Remembrance Day and other ceremonial occasions. General Hillier brought that regard to every day of the living calendar. He re-cemented the connection between the military and the Canadian public. A Canadian soldier today, therefore, man or woman, in army, navy or air force, walks a little prouder, smiles a little wider, because of that strengthened connection.

General Hillier is smart, straight and knows what he wants. He works like a dog. The modern military man has to know the battlefield and warfare, but he has to be equally skilled in politics, the media, the inside arts of Parliament Hill and the twilight combats of the bureaucracy.

General Hillier has the whole package. He is distinctly unchoked by political correctness, and he could offer master classes to politicians (and journalists, too) in the almost abandoned art of saying what you mean and meaning what you say. His deepest gift, I think, was knowing what his real job was; as he’s put it often, his first responsibility was to the men and women of Canada’s military. He said he was working for them and their families, and they believed him. It was no pose.

Which brings me to the central characteristic of our now-departing general. He inspired trust, and people, in and out of the military, genuinely looked up to him. The
question his leaving might pose is why, in all the other public fields, and in politics, which is leadership, too, there are not more like him. General Hillier is as large as he is—and this is not said to his detraction—because leadership in other areas of public life is so flat, feeble and mediocre. Some politicians are said to have feared or envied him. They would have feared and envied less had they tried to be bigger themselves. We can leave that for now. This is General Hillier’s moment.

I think we can all be very pleased that we have had a public servant—for that, finally, is what a general most fundamentally is—who has elevated the service he led, and renewed the spirits and esteem of the Canadian military, and the spirit of esteem in which we hold them.

In the realm of celebrity, Marshall McLuhan’s otherwise rather naked aphorism has some application: The medium
is
the message. Britney Spears is a celebrity because she is a celebrity. Paris Hilton, Madonna—these are the great vessels of the vacant idea of our times. Famous for being famous. The essence of celebrity is to maintain celebrity. Celebrities “do” things (sing badly, act poorly, dress strangely or not at all, talk rudely, smuggle dead raccoons onto talk shows), not for the sake of these things themselves, but as “hooks” to keep the cameras trained on them, to feed their gluttonous narcissism.

Fame is not an accomplishment; it is a need. So it is an axiom that what a celebrity does always has a primary reference to his or her celebrity, and is connected only secondarily, and at a distant remove, to the actual thing done. For reference, contemplate, as we did last week, poor Sean Penn putting together his own
Coles Notes
on the Iranian elections.

For more current reference, let us turn to the so-called Live 8, the “world” concert taking place in several venues on the day of the G8 summit in Scotland. Behind this sing-along are no lesser eminences than the chicly ubiquitous Bono and the one-time singer from the Boomtown Rats, the now-ennobled Bob Geldof.

It’s an internationalist soiree, a kind of postmillennial reprise of the Band Aid and Live Aid concerts Sir Bob, when he was just Mr. Bob, put on some twenty years ago for the relief of famine in Ethiopia, and which gave the world the Dickensian treacle of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and accumulated close to $100 million in aid for Africa.

This time around, Bono and Sir Bob are aiming for something rather different. These two have extended their celebrity by straddling the world of pop music and the high conference altitudes of Davos and the G8 summits.

Bono, in particular, has become something of a self-appointed, free-floating superstar-as-ambassador. He has long since won Paul Martin as a buddy, and is on a first-name basis with the leadership in dozens of countries.

Sir Bob seems a more moody, brittle sort than Bono, as evidenced this week by a lecture he gave to Bono’s buddy, Paul: that if Canada wasn’t going to live up to its commitment of 0.7 per cent of GNP to foreign aid, then he, Mr. Martin, shouldn’t come to the G8 summit at all.

I don’t know, precisely, when the alumnus of the Boomtown Rats (and composer of “The Chains of Pain” and “My Birthday Suit”) was put in charge of the guest
list at the G8, and, I suspect surprisingly, neither does the hectoring (“Too Late God”) Sir Bob. It strikes me as impertinence swaddled in righteousness. It’s probably a punk thing.

What do they think this scattered concert is supposed, really, to do? What link do a bunch of celebrities singing passé songs—in Barrie or Paris—have to do with the politics or the development of Africa? Inevitably, the feeble and hoary answer will come back that the concerts “raise awareness.” Awareness of what? Awareness of Bob Geldof and Bono, mainly.

For that matter, how exactly does one sing “for” a country? And what possible connection does this live singing, or Céline Dion offering her anorexic nimbus via satellite from Las Vegas to a giant screen in Barrie, have with the meeting of the leaders of the G8 nations in Scotland?

Tens of thousands of people jam Highway 401 to head up to Barrie to attend a summer concert that has “8” in its title, co-hosted by the roadkill comic Tom Green. What happens after the last chord is sounded? Does Zimbabwe cease its infernal turmoils? Does the protracted slaughter in Darfur shut down for the night? Does the World Bank dismantle itself, the UN find a purpose, and the myriad aid agencies of the planet suddenly find a moral force that, pre-singalong, was out of their grasp?

Of course not.
Entertainment Tonight
and its grisly clones go mad with coverage and “exclusives”; the glossy magazines,
The View
and assorted megaphones of the celebrity
set tell us who was wearing what, who stayed where and who did what with whom.

But, in the end, it will be just one more self-absorbed, pretentious, hollow celebrity shtick, another moment for ex-punk stars and rock maestros in decline to strut before the world’s lights and cameras for a moment more.

Celebrity will seek more celebrity, and when the hits start to fade, celebrity will discover a cause. That’s all Live 8 is, and that is all it and its successors will ever be. The pop-star missionary is a contradiction in terms. As well as a furious irony.

And Paul, you go to that summit, regardless of what the rude Mr. Geldof has to say.

It’s nice to see that Madonna has come down from her neon cross—a Las Vegas-looking crucifixion of the emphatically Material Girl was part of the safe shock of her recent tour. After all, if you can’t blaspheme Christianity these days, what can you blaspheme?

Now she’s descended on Africa, following the trendy, spangled footsteps of Brad and Angelina and other monstrously rich celebrities who have turned Africa and its misery into their own publicity-fat conscience theme park. They should start a foundation: good deeds that make it to
Entertainment Tonight
, adoptions that land you the cover of
People
magazine.

Madonna, her entourage, her private jet and Guy Ritchie have plucked one African baby from an orphanage, and the world is all a-twitter at another celebrity good deed. The story is almost big enough to drown out the news that U2, the rock band, has moved some of its assets from its native Ireland to the Netherlands. The
Netherlands has a very favourable tax rate, even better than Ireland, which for artists is already a tax haven of unimaginable indulgence.

U2 is, of course, Bono’s band, Bono, the greatest scold of rich governments on the face of the earth. Bono was the man who nagged Paul Martin in public for Canada’s not giving enough for African debt relief, but then, Bono—friend of Bill Clinton, consort of the princes of the world, World Economic Forum attendee, gazillionaire—nags everyone about Africa. He even read the riot act of liberal outrage to his own government because the Irish government, like Canada, was slack on debt relief for Africa. Uriah Heap with groupies.

Bono and his multimillionaire bandmates have hauled their songwriting business out of Ireland because Ireland has modestly upped the tax levy on artists making over half a million a year. So he wants Ireland to give more of its taxes to help poor Africa, but he, Bono, wants to pay less in taxes to Ireland. I’d call him a whited sepulchre, except that’s a biblical reference, and Madonna would probably claim copyright.

Bono did not hesitate, at a concert here last year around election time, to tag Paul Martin, his friend, for not living up to his pledge to increase Canada’s foreign aid. Bono said he was crushed. Well, I guess the “Make Poverty History” front-man has less trouble with inconsistency and hypocrisy when it’s his bank account and those of his bandmates that actually take the hit. Yet Bono’s
been shining his rock-star celebrity halo so assiduously in public that you’d think he was a cross between Mother Theresa and Cardinal Léger.

This guy has been lecturing whole continents for decades—he’s the self-declared pope of poverty—about Africa, but now hauls part of his empire from his home country to Amsterdam. Lecture us no more, Mr. Bono. A tax haven is not a pulpit. Amsterdam is not an African village. However, all is not lost. Maybe Bono will adopt someone. Let us pray—let us
all
pray—it’s Madonna. They deserve each other.

The reviews are in concerning last weekend’s ecosanctimony staged by global warming’s Nostradamus, Al Gore, and most of them aren’t pretty. It was, according to the advance hype—and the hype for this event matched anything Hollywood revs up for Johnny Depp in a bandana or a new Jessica Simpson big-screen onslaught—going to command an audience in excess of two billion.

There is nothing original in rounding up a beaker full of rock stars and movie celebrities, faded songsters and a rapper or two to variously strum, gyrate and posture for a
cause du jour
. We have had “We Are the World” and Live Aid, Willie Nelson doing his minstrel bit for the American
farmer, and last year’s care-a-palooza, the Make Poverty History jamboree, which didn’t.

NBC devoted three hours of prime time to last Saturday’s effort, which trawled a measly 2.7 million viewers, a number that would be embarrassing for a home-cooking show or a rerun of
Three’s Company
. Not even such A-list, world-dominating entertainers as Madonna and Shakira, assisted by those cleavage climatologists the Pussycat Dolls, could lure the torpid and the unaware, in any numbers, to the home screen. Nor could Snoop Dogg (the bard of “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang”), appearing on stage in Hamburg (Hamburg? Who knew?) jolt the singalong into a zone of even mild, credible buzz.