Thursday, June 08, 2006

It ain't rock and roll

U2 is promoting ESPN's coverage of the World Cup. Obviously, this is hardly a big issue. Still, it's not quite as innocent as Paul McGuinness makes out.
"There's something wonderfully democratic about soccer," Paul McGuinness, U2's manager, said yesterday from his home in London. "It's the cheapest game in the world. All you need is a ball, and boys and girls can play it. Not that we're zealots, but we feel that soccer is a good thing, so our association with it is a good one."
You want to advocate that boys and girls should play soccer, fine, but don't pretend that this about soccer when it's really about ESPN (subsidiary of ABC) and FIFA, a massive, controlling money-making machine. And, it's not like U2 donated the money from these ads to buy soccer balls for poor African kids or anything.

If you want to see the ads, they're here.