Bono (U2) – Was there ever any doubt who would take the number 1 spot?* Not only the most annoying person in rock, but possibly the most annoying person in anything. Woodworking, botany, space exploration – you name it, if Bono was there, you’d hate him. There’s much to gripe about, but personally, I just don’t like the way he cozies up to fascists. Bush, Jessie Helms, Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair, the Pope, the other Pope – give Bono a photo op with a stealth Fourth Reicher disguised as a “democratically elected official” (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, ahem) and there he is, on stilts, baffling all and sundry with his nonsensical quasi-beat poet hipsterspeak while accidentally advancing the cause of world totalitarianism and No Line On the Horizon CD sales. If he thinks that he can genuinely dazzle these people into compassion with his textured and sweeping yet commercially dynamite post punk mojo, then I humbly submit that Bono should familiarize himself with the tale of the the scorpion and the frog. The only other possibility is that he’s one of them. Which would be a damn shame, since I really, really want to believe in his sincerity. But whatever incremental difference Bono’s touted “work” is making in the Third World, the bottom line is that he’s a stooge witting or otherwise to the Corporatocracy, and we will never have a Bono who attacks or even privately questions the superstructure that causes all that suffering in the first place. That would be a bit like cutting off his nose to spite his solid gold Rolls Royce, right? Also, Bono’s singing voice actually gives me a rash.

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