There have been a flurry of posts about the U2 concert and how supposedly U2 & Bono 'arranged' a concert fundraiser for Rick Santorum at their October 16th concert in Philadelphia. This is a misconception made-up by someone in the Santorum campaign and promoted by Newsmax to make it sound like that Bono was willing to raise money for Rick Santorum. However, when you do the research you'll find that it's a ploy by repukes to associate Rick Santorum with a popular band in hopes to bring in some votes from U2 fans.
About 2 months ago I was outraged thinking that the Rolling Stones were actually going to host a fundraiser concert for Arnold Schwarzenegger. However a few days later we found out that the Stones had no involvement, just some wealthy fans of Arnold who managed to have access to a luxury box at a Boston venue and sold tickets as a fundraiser for the Gropernator's re-election campaign. The Rolling Stones, just like U2 with the Santorum fundraiser, have no control over who buys the tickets or how they are used.
The original story about the fundraiser came from
NewsMax which should have raised the red flag for all of us. They twisted the story to make it sound like U2 & Bono were on board for supporting Rick Santorum. Even Rush Limbaugh jump on the Bono bandwagon thinking that somehow Bono turned into one of them. And from what I was told the story made it to CNN.
But a quick check to
U2's official Website had a message that was dated today with the following statement:
11.10.2005
Political Fundraisers (Not)
DATA have posted a statement reacting to 'inaccurate media statements on U2 shows as political fundraisers.'
We're posting the statement here because we've had a number of emails expressing concern about certain media stories people have read.
Jamie Drummond, Executive Director of DATA (debt AIDS trade Africa), the Africa Advocacy group co-founded by Bono said this earlier today:
'Throughout the U2 tour, politicians from both sides have been organizing fundraisers at the venues or around specific shows. Neither DATA or Bono are involved in these and they cannot be controlled. The U2 concerts are categorically not fundraisers for any politician - they are rock concerts for U2 fans.'
Don't believe everything you read!I also checked
DATA's website (an African Relief organization) and they came out with an almost identical statement. You have to admit that U2 & Data both are class acts because they could have ripped a new one for the Santorum campaign to misrepresent the concert fundraiser but they showed tact by making a blanket statement that U2 does concert benefits for charity NOT political fundraisers.
Finally, there was some talk about the exuberant prices for the resale of U2 concert tickets. About a month ago I starting researching how to get tickets for a sold out Green Day concert at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia (BTW, same venue as the U2 concert and Santorum fundraiser). I learned alot about ticket scalping laws and how you can go about purchasing tickets through brokers in the state. Basically scalping is illegal and only licensed brokers can resell tickets and then only at a certain value above the cost of the ticket. So naturally my first assumption was there was some illegal activities going on with the resale of those tickets. Well, further research finds that there are exemptions for
fund-raising activities and charitable organizations; municipal ordinances superseded. Since technically the tickets are being resold as a fundraiser for Rick Santorum - they $1000 price-tag is legal.
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/ticketscalplaws.htmBut hopefully we'll be more attune next time we see Republican 'fundraisers' at popular rock concerts. The musicians have nothing to do with it and technically have no control over how the tickets are used that are purchased for the concert. The best they can do is issue a statement like U2 did that states they aren't involved and hope that the media, like CNN, will retract their incorrect stories (CNN was shocked to find out they reported a false story). It also helps that when we hear shocking stories like this that we research first before we assume the worst (which technically I did at first). We can also help out by outing these misrepresentations as desperate acts by desperate politicians who are hurting so badly in the poll that they would try and trick people by associating themselves with certain popular musicians even if the musicians have shown no involvement with that candidate. Santorum is behind by 18 points in Pennsylvania against leading candidate Bob Casey. So what better way to help win a few votes over by making it seem like Bono & U2 were endorsing Santorum. When we see this stuff online we need to get the word out that this is nothing more than a ruse to dupe voters.
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