Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Bono: Officially Better Than You

According to wikipedia: "in the High and Late Middle Ages, the principal duty of a knight was to fight as, and lead, heavy cavalry". Oddly enough, the standards of knighthood have fallen somewhat; in fact, if someone with little to no knowledge of Britain stumbled onto our shores today, they would probably come to the conclusion that the principal duties of a knight involved prancing about on a stage in a Donald Duck outfit and disturbingly over sized sunglasses, stabbing one-legged porn stars a bit with a broken glass and rooting ninety percent of the world's female population.

That's because Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have all been considered important enough to be bestowed with a state instituted title of honour. Don't you just love living in a country that has created a system in which certain people are officially declared to be much better than you by way of their ability to write songs about postboxes and kites and other twee nonsense?

Now, some people have argued that this whole knighthood rubbish is just the monarchy's way of saying, "Hey! We're not really an increasingly outdated and irrelevant anachronism in a world that has embraced Democracy! We like pop music too, you see!" but those people are probably just jealous haters. I mean, I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with deserving individuals getting bestowed with awards and titles for accomplishing something important by a woman whose greatest accomplishment is once making herself a cup of tea instead of asking her hordes of man servants, slaves and personal chefs to make one for her. But that's just me.

Anyway, just when you thought England couldn't slump lower than that time they let Paul McCartney join the hallowed ranks of Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad and
that bloke that looks like a sheila, the Queen has decided to grant an honorary knighthood to the biggest knob sack in the entire world: Bono from U2. Yes, all you ordinary plebs are now officially shitter than a man who wears sunglasses at all times, even inside and at night. As justified by Tony Blair, who probably should be doing more important things than sucking up to self righteous rock stars: "You have tirelessly used your voice to speak up for Africa". Which I think is quite a polite way of saying "used your inexplicable popularity to fly around the globe harping on at world leaders about how shit Africa is and getting a bit of free publicity in the process" really.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Bono accepting an honorary knighthood from England is actually tantamount to some sort of vast betrayal if you consider that several of the Queen's direct ancestors have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Irishmen, the destruction of their native language, several centuries of economic subjugation etc. etc. etc. But then again, I'm sure the Irish already hate Bono after that time he decided not to pay millions of dollars worth of taxes back into the country of his birth.


Arguably, the right thing to do would have been to just refuse the bloody thing. It's been done before; the list of celebrities who have refused some sort of imperial honour includes David Bowie, John Cleese, Kenneth Branagh, Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, John le Carré, Robert Graves, Evelyn Waugh, Roald Dahl, J G Ballard, George Melly and even Nigella Lawson. Of course Bono did nothing of the sort even stating that he was "very flattered". Which means he now has less credibility than some snobby, posh bint with a cooking show.

I decided to do a bit of research by asking Colin the Irishman that works in my office how he feels about Bono's knighthood. He said, "I don't know about Bono, but that queen looks like she could do with a good knobbing." I think Colin is actually from New Zealand rather than Ireland but he does have a funny accent so close enough.

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