Know Your Bonoisms, Part 19: Being Bono Full Time

All day, I planned to write a column that was solemn, somber and appropriately hysterical about the news that Bono’s condition was much more serious than originally reported. After all, there’s a big difference between a broken arm and a facial fracture involving the orbit of his eye, three separate fractures of his left shoulder blade and a fracture of the left humerus bone in his upper arm with the bone shattering in six different places and tearing through his skin, treated by bone repair surgery involving three metal plates and 18 screws – just a little difference. The eye injury alone sounds positively dismal, considering Bono’s glaucoma. Can he even say “every eye looking every other way” anymore with any authenticity? More than likely, he can say he was counting down ‘til the pain would stop.

And then, there’s the impact this has on us as fans. Like you, I was shocked about the news, disappointed to learn of the Tonight Show cancellation, and utterly distraught to find out that this “high energy bicycle accident” was not your average tumble off a beach cruiser. To top things off, I learned I might be able to get into the sold out KROQ Acoustic Christmas show after all – only to wonder if U2 will actually make it there now. After we spent the last two and a half months defending U2 for offering an awesome album to the whole world for free, now we have to endure listening to jerks who “don’t get what’s so great about Bono” rejoice at his downfall – and, twice in one week! This should be the best time to be a U2 fan, but lately it just hasn’t been. Let’s admit it.

So where do we go from here? Like I said, I was ready to type out a full on sob fest for your reading pleasure. Then, I saw the U2 fan community on Twitter buzzing up a storm about some blog post. Huh? Indeed, it was Bono; well, at least it was a blog post about an issue he cares about with the byline credited to him. I can’t say with certainty whether Bono really wrote the entirety of this Huffington Post article himself; after all, the man has a broken pinky finger. Let’s get real here, guys. But as a professional ghostwriter myself, I completely respect that Bono has someone who writes for him when he doesn’t have time, or doesn’t want to reveal too much of himself, or is laid up in a New York hospital with serious injuries to his face and multiple extremities. So maybe it’s him dictating to someone, or maybe it’s someone writing for him; the point is, the U2 team would not allow Bono to receive a bylined clip anywhere if he was truly at death’s door. That would be disingenuous, and that’s not U2, no matter who’s managing them now. It certainly isn’t Bono. If he’s conscious, he’s going to be Bono full time.