“This class struggle plays hell with your poetry,” John Reed, celebrated in Warren Beatty’s Reds, confessed to friends after jumping from the lighthearted literary Left of Greenwich Village into the world of hardcore Communists. Bono may be thinking the same thing about saving the world. U2’s much-hyped No Line on the Horizon, the band’s first album in nearly five years, might be interpreted by celebrities as a cautionary tale against mixing activism with their art. As I write in my American Spectator review of No Line on the Horizon, the album represents the transformation of U2 from relevant it band to greatest hits act. It is uninspired, leaving diehard fans to wonder if meetings with popes, presidents, and queens, fundraising for debt relief, human rights activists, and AIDS, and writing columns for The New York Times makes U2 an afterthought for Bono.
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