Pita Sharples gets all excited about Naomi Campbell and....Bono. Did he get their autographs?The Minister for Maori Affairs, Pita Sharples, is a man who always has some acute and incisive political observations to make. And so it was in South Africa.
Sharples had nothing to say about the impoverished state of the South African working class under the ANC, but he was excited about who he was sitting between on the backseat of the bus taking him home from visiting Mandela lying in state.
A thrilled Pita Sharples was eager to tell the media - TVNZ in this case - that he had been sitting between, wait for it, U2 frontman Bono and model Naomi Campbell. Wow.
Sharples was clearly impressed by Mandela's celebrity pulling power - and what a bonus to bask in some of that celebrity 'glow'.
Bono, who hides his considerable wealth in tax havens, recently said that capitalism would lift people out of poverty - despite the fact that the level of poverty in the world today is greater than it has ever been.
Harry Browne blew apart Bono's carefully manufactured image as the saviour of the world's poor in his book The Frontman: Bono (In The Name of Power): Writes Browne:
"For nearly three decades as a public figure, Bono has been … amplifying elite discourses, advocating ineffective solutions, patronising the poor and kissing the arses of the rich and powerful".
He goes on to say that Bono's approach to Africa is "a slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete".
But the starstruck and celebrity obsessed Sharples probably believes all of Bono's bullshit.
He probably managed to grab a photo with 'the great Bono' and got the t-shirt as well.
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