Saturday was the big Bill Clinton’s celebration at the Hollywood bowl in Los Angeles, pompously called ‘A decade of Difference: A Concert Celebrating 10 Years of the William J. Clinton Foundation’, and conveniently coupled with Clinton’s 65th birthday party.
It was attended by tons of celebrities, and I did not go (some boxes at the bowl cost like $10,000 for the occasion!!), didn't watch it streamed live on Yahoo and just read about it.
According to the LA Times and the LA Weekly, which had both long articles about it (the show lasted something like 4 hours), beside journalist Laura Ling, who was rescued from North Korea by Clinton, and Kenny Chesney, it was an usual-suspect-list: Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Usher, Bono and the Edge all performed in honor of Clinton, whom Ellen DeGeneres called a ‘hero’.
Usher told him he loved him and Lady Gaga, under a giant mushroom hat, attempted to seduce him, changing ‘Bad Romance’ into ‘Bill Romance’, wishing Clinton a happy birthday, Marilyn Monroe style (oh that’s truly original), and saying ‘I just love you and your hot wife’, … that’s disgusting for some reasons.
There also was an intro video featuring footage from Clinton's last day in office, in which Jay-Z dropped the ‘first black president’ line, and a guy from Colombia called Juanes, another guy from Somalia, called K'naan, played their songs to show that Clinton cares for these third-world countries; For one song, K'naan got the help of … Did you say Africa? Bono, of course.
Clinton did his little speech and then (I am just going to copy a sentence from the LAWeekly) ‘Bono and The Edge came up to bore the shit out of everyone’. Bono called Clinton ‘By far the most beloved American since JFK, to the Irish’, and Clinton thanked Bono a million times for his One Campaign.
What can I say? It sounds nauseating. There are only two ways to deal with that kind of event, attend it and embrace the love fest or not going and make fun of it. Unless you have 10K to blow, better make that only one way.