Rockers cry over Africa

Mark Steyn tackles the silliness behind the Live8 concert:

Don't get me wrong. I love old rockers - not for the songs, which are awful, but for their business affairs, which so totally rock. In 1997, David Bowie became the first pop star to hold a bond offering himself. How about that? Fifty-five million dollars' worth of Bowie 'class A royalty-backed notes' were snapped up in minutes after Moody's in New York gave them their coveted triple-A rating. Once upon a time, rock stars weren't rated by Moody, they were moody - they self-destructed, they choked to death in their own vomit, they hoped to die before they got old. Instead, judging from Sir Pete Townshend on Saturday, they got older than anyone's ever been. Today, Paul McCartney is a businessman: he owns the publishing rights to Annie and Guys & Dolls. These faux revolutionaries are capitalists red in tooth and claw. The system that enriched them could enrich Africa. But capitalism's the one cause the poseurs never speak up for. The rockers demand we give our fokkin' money to African dictators to manage, while they give their fokkin' money to Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts to manage. Which of those models makes more sense?

The reference to Winthrop Stimson, et al, comes from a point Steyn makes in the beginning of his article, about Linda McCartney ensuring that her entire multimillion dollar estate was probated in NY at her death, rather than in England, to prevent her family losing out because of Britain's hu-normous (as my son says) death duties.