Celebrity Diplomacy

Can Bono, Brangelina and Becks Save the World?

As I read Andrew F. Cooper’s Celebrity Diplomacy, a first-rate meditation on the role of media stars as international relations players, my mind went back to 2000 and a visit by Bono, lead singer of the mega-group U2, to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  I heard a commotion outside my office on the third floor of the Littauer Center and peered out into the hallway just in time to see a diminutive figure with longish hair disappear around the corner.  Several young women staffers were standing about in a gaga state.  “Did you see?” one breathlessly declared.  “That was BONO!”  I had recently heard that Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who headed the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development, had struck up an acquaintanceship with the Irish vocalist;  the two shared an interest in the issue of Third World poverty and debt forgiveness as an antidote.  Bono was in fact on his way over to the CID office for a meeting with Sachs.  (For Bono’s June 2001 Harvard Class Day speech, click here.)  At the time, the budding relationship between the buttoned-down academic and the flamboyant rock star seemed to many observers, myself included, little more than an bemusing, ephemeral oddity.

Those of us who at the time minimized Bono’s social-political commitment as a well-meaning pop musician’s passing fancy were of course proven wrong.  The cover of Celebrity Diplomacy features a photograph taken years later of Bono walking confidently beside President George Bush, a testament to the longevity and seriousness of the singer-activist’s humanitarian efforts, as well as the extraordinary access to the corridors of political power that he has developed.  Unsurprisingly, Bono looms large in Cooper’s analysis of celebrities who seek to play a constructive role in international affairs, whether through an affiliation with intergovernmental institutions like UN-affiliated agencies, NGOs like Greenpeace and Amnesty International, or through freelance efforts of varying sophistication.

Cooper’s taxonomy of celebrity diplomacy is straightforward.  “To retain the label of ‘celebrity diplomats’,” he writes, “individuals must not only possess ample communication skills, a sense of mission, and some global reach.  They must enter into the official diplomatic world and operate through the matrix of complex relationships with state officials.” (p. 7)  The historic template for celebrity diplomacy was provided by actors Danny Kaye and especially Audrey Hepburn in their work for UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Today we have the nonpareil Bono, “the talisman of celebrity diplomacy” (p. 36), who has turned out to be preternaturally gifted in the art of navigating and manipulating traditional power precincts, whether the White House, Whitehall, or the World Economic Forum.  Aside from Bono, Cooper offers sharp overviews of the activities and effectiveness of other celebrity diplomats, including former Boomtown Rats lead singer Sir Bob Geldof—mastermind of Live Aid and the “outsider” yang to Bono’s “insider” ying;  the surprisingly effective and engaged British footballer David Beckham;  the Late Princess Diana;  and of course actress Angelina Jolie (also featured on the cover of Celebrity Diplomacy), who has displayed perseverance and braved numerous hardships in her ongoing role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.

As Cooper notes, Jolie is if anything an even more implausible celebrity diplomat success story than was Bono, an actress who “reveled in an image of wild, eccentric behavior via her series of relationships with celebrity men … multiple tattoos, and a variety of other ‘silly self-destructive things.’” (p. 32)  But she has been diligent and committed in her efforts, garnering respect from figures like Jeffrey Sachs and former Council on Foreign Relations president Winston Lord, who expressed to me his great admiration for Jolie in a conversation some months back.

Along with the celebrity diplomat successes there have been clunkers, such as Gerri Halliwell of the Spice Girls, who quickly lost interest in advocating for the UN on family planning, and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, whose financial problems led her away from pro bono UN activism to concentrate on her contract with Weight Watchers.  And then there are the “loose cannons” (p. 115)—figures like actor Richard Gere and singer-actor Harry Belafonte, and even Princess Di herself, who have both affiliated themselves with official agencies and made transgressive, undiplomatic statements, such as Belafonte’s 2006 denunciation of George W. Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world” on Venezuelan television in the presence of an approving Hugo Chavez.

Nonetheless, Cooper is quite correct in concluding that while celebrity diplomacy is not problem-free, the benefits can be considerable:  “The best celebrity diplomats have figured out far more successfully than their professional counterparts how a sophisticated form of public diplomacy can be operated.” (p. 127)  But there is an undiscussed potential dark side to celebrity diplomacy that goes beyond the risk of trivializing or distorting critical issues that concerns contemporary critics of the phenomenon (p. 114).  Celebrity Diplomacy concentrates exclusively on efforts undertaken in support of humanitarian and liberal causes.  African poverty may have made strange bedfellows of George Bush and Bono, but few on the left would argue with the sentiment behind their partnership.

But what about when celebrities support vile regimes and programs?  Charles Lindbergh was one of America’s foremost celebrities in the 1930s due to both his history-making solo flight across the Atlantic and the tragic kidnapping and murder of his child.  Lindbergh repeatedly visited Nazi Germany, lauded the Nazis’ accomplishments and the power of the Luftwaffe, received a medal from Air Marshall Herman Goering, and vigorously opposed war between the U.S. and Germany.  In the 1960s Hollywood producer Samuel Bronston established a high-profile movie studio in Franco Spain, where he offered unstinting aid to the international propaganda efforts of the right-wing military dictatorship there via popular epic films like El Cid, pro-Franco documentaries, and promoting U.S. and other international tourism to Spain.  And last year director Steven Spielberg signed on as a leading consultant to China’s communist government for the 2008 Beijing Olympiad, a role he recently relinquished in the face of withering criticism from opponents of Chinese policy toward Sudan and the Darfur genocide like actress Mia Farrow, who warned the director of Schindler’s List that he risked becoming “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Olympics.”  Whether out of ideological affinity (Lindbergh), ruthless instrumentalism (Bronston), or sheer heedlessness (Spielberg), celebrities have periodically placed themselves in the service of heinous, or at least morally dubious, causes.

Still, such activities are clearly the exception, not the rule, when it comes to celebrity diplomacy.  The great majority of such efforts conform to a Hippocratic standard:  at worst, they Do No Harm; and the best efforts, like those of Angelina Jolie and Bono, dramatically expand the parameters of what has traditionally thought to be achievable via diplomacy.  Andrew Cooper has done an outstanding job of exploring this brave, not-quite-new world.  Moreover, aside from its substantive virtues, Celebrity Diplomacy displays clear organization, a salutary brevity, and a droll wit (for example, “Bono had to deal with rebukes that his ‘day’ and ‘night’ jobs—even if Bono’s day job was most often performed at night—were at odds with each other.” [p. 42]).  Future scholars of this subject, and I hope there will be many, will owe a great debt to his seminal study.